Today is the last #JobsDay with data from the Trump Administration (today’s data are from mid-January). So what does the economy former President Trump handed off to President Biden look like? It’s bleak. 1/

The labor market added just 49,000 jobs in January. And that's likely too rosy—given low seasonal hiring in the pandemic, seasonal adjustments likely made the December numbers look worse than they really were and are making the January numbers look better than they really are. 2/

The average job change of the last three months provides a better sense of current movements, and it was just 29,000. We have 9.9 million fewer jobs than we did before the recession. At *this* pace it would take 29 years to get back to prerecession jobs levels. 3/

Further, in the year before the recession, we added 202,000 jobs per month on average, so since last February, we could have added around 2.2 million jobs. That means the total gap in the labor market right now is on the order of 12 million jobs. 4/

*This* is the shape of recovery Biden has inherited. 5/

Another grim finding is that we're down 1.3 million state & local government jobs since last Feb—most of it (nearly 1.0 million) in education. THIS IS A MINDBOGGLING UNFORCED ERROR. Fortunately, given the D majority in the Senate, Congress can pass aid to state & local govts. 6/