The last time the unemployment rate was at 3.8%, as it is now, was in 2000. But back then, a combination of strong growth, low unemployment and solid earnings produced a federal budget surplus for four years in a row, from 1998 through 2001. The annual surplus peaked in 2000 at $236 billion.
There are no surpluses now, which suggests the Trump economy might have a hollow core. The federal deficit this year will hit around $800 billion, up from $665 billion last year and $585 billion in Obama’s final year. And the Congressional Budget Office expects deficits to rise to more than $1 trillion per year by 2020, and go nowhere but up.
That’s one big reason some economists think strong numbers on jobs and growth won’t last.
“These solid numbers look increasingly illusory,” Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist of the Economic Outlook Group, wrote in a recent note to clients. “A healthy economy does not generate historic deficits.” He places the odds of a recession in 2019 at 55%. That’s a reminder that you only know how strong or weak the economy is with a few years of hindsight.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-wrong-greatest-economy-history-140003521.html