As President Trump prepares to deliver his first State of the Union, he will surely focus on the positives of his first year in office. Namely, he will focus on what appear to be positive job growth numbers, something that he promised as a candidate.
Specifically, he promised his base he would lead growth in manufacturing and defense jobs, and restore industries like coal.
You may recall that back in May of 2017, TrumpTweeted he created millions of US jobs when went to the G7 Summit in Italy. These job openings, given the military equipment deals he says he made, would go to contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
So how did the defense industry do? Have we seen 1,000,000 new jobs?
As of publishing, Lockheed Martin has 6,130 open positions. In May (when Trump made his claim), the company had 5,228 job openings. On the date of his Tweet, Lockheed had 4,956 job openings. In the period following his tweet, openings sunk.
Boeing’s story is visually more interesting. At the time of the Tweet, Boeing was recruiting for 498 open positions. As of the State of the Union, it was hiring around 870, a decent uptick.
Raytheon has seen a quality uptick in openings since a slump this time last year. On the day of the tweet, Raytheon was showing 2,803 openings on its jobs website. Today, it’s hiring for 3,057 after a recent hiring spike in November of around 3,300 jobs.
Northrop Grumman, who had a difficult 2017 in terms of job growth, is also seeing a bit of a rebound in recent months. On Tweet day, the contractor was listing 3,014. That dipped to around 2,777 on August 1, and after a brief Autumn rebound settled to around 2,488 as of State of the Union. Most interestingly, Northrop is a subcontractor for Lockheed Martin’s F-35, which Trump not only infamously cut the price of for the world market, but also believes is invisible.
While this may not amount to 1,000,000 new jobs, one thing is certain: Trump is good for the defense industry.