Fact Checker Trump’s claim ‘one in six’ young men are jobless or in jail because of Obama’s policies

“Perhaps most shockingly, one in six men aged 18 to 34 are either in jail or out of work.”
— Donald Trump, speech at Economic Club of New York, Sept. 15, 2016

The Facts

The figure comes from a May 2016 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The data are from 2014, when there were 38 million men in the United States between 18 and 34 years old. About 5 million of them didn’t have jobs, and about 1 million were incarcerated. That means roughly one in six men were in jail or out of work, like Trump said.

“Jobless” means those who are “unemployed” (defined as not employed and looking for work), plus those who are “out of the labor force” (defined as not employed and not looking for work). It does not include people who are in school.

The combined rate of joblessness and incarceration differed for men based on levels of education. Not surprisingly, men with no more than a high school education had much higher rates of joblessness and incarceration than men who had some college education. The rates also differed by race. Young black men were more likely to be jobless or incarcerated, and this trend was consistent from 1980 to 2014. In 2014, young black men were about twice as likely to be jobless or incarcerated as young Hispanic or white men.

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Whether this is a “shocking” statistic is an opinion, but the increase is rooted in well-intended policy changes at local, state and federal levels. For example, fewer young men are now likely to find a job because they have to pay for child support even if the child is not in their custody. And fewer low-skilled, less-educated young men have job opportunities in the military because military jobs are now open to women and require at least a high school diploma. Moreover, this figure may well be out of date since the economy has consistently improved since 2014, the end point for the data.

While Trump correctly cites an official figure published by the CBO, the context in which he uses this claim makes it misleading. Thus, Trump earns Two Pinocchios.

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