As she courts women and minorities, Harris faces harsh reality they fared well in Trump economy

As Vice President Kamala Harris ramps up her campaign, she has targeted key traditionally Democratic constituencies such as Hispanics, black Americans, and women to bolster her cause, but with the economy top of mind for most voters, she will face a daunting task of convincing those who remember the Trump economy to put their trust in her on the issue.

Trump and Harris put out their competing economic agendas in recent weeks with Trump particularly focusing on his past record in office. He has repeatedly highlighted economic statistics showing record unemployment among certain minority groups, as well as job and wage growth during his tenure.

Harris, by contrast, is largely stuck with the Biden administration’s economic record, which has seen considerable price increases and drawn poor ratings from the public. To be sure, Harris can point to record-breaking performances on key stock indices and a handful of other positive metrics, but the “Bidenomics” message did not resonate with voters and the president currently boasts an average 38.6% approval rating on the economy, according to RealClearPolitics. A further 58.5% disapprove of the administration’s handling of the issue.

The RCP averages don’t break down Biden’s job approval by demographics. Though certain groups may vary in their estimation of the nation’s economic well being, the relatively poor public view of the economy overall is likely to translate to some extent within specific subsets of the population.

The Trump and Harris campaigns face different hurdles in pitching their economic records. For Harris, inflation is the albatross around her neck that undercuts many of the relatively positive topline economic data under the current administration. For Trump, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic plays that role. 

Trump’s own sales pitch on the economy has largely ignored the pandemic and pointed to his stewardship of American markets under relatively normal circumstances. The Biden administration, meanwhile, has repeatedly attempted to claim credit for record job growth, though Trump has said such numbers represent “bounce back” jobs from the pandemic’s end.

Ultimately, however, whether appealing to women, Latinos, or black Americans, the campaigns will largely be at the mercy of those groups’ perceptions of their respective economies and the data seems to suggest Trump will have an easier time of it.

Women

Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik this week took issue with Harris’s economic pitch, calling the claim that “a Kamala Harris presidency will deliver historic economic opportunity for working women” to be “one of the most egregious” lies from Democrats.

In an op-ed with RealClearPolitics this week, Stefanik made the case that working women were materially better off under the Trump economy than under the existing Biden-Harris administration.

“The oft-asked question about balancing work and family life is: Can women have it all? Under President Trump’s leadership, the answer was a resounding yes,” she wrote. Stefanik specifically pointed to an 8.2% real increase in average weekly earnings for women and record median income for women in 2020. 

In 2017, women took home median weekly earnings of $770, moreover, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2020, that figure reached $891, for an increase of 15.7%. By contrast, that figure stood at $912 in 2021 and at $996 in 2023, an increase of 9.2%. Adjusted for inflation, however, those wages rose 7.5% under Trump, but declined by 6.8% under Biden and Harris. While the figure continued to increase in terms of raw numbers, inflation ultimately left women with less purchasing power at the end of the week.

Stefanik further highlighted Trump’s doubling of the child tax credit, his creation of a paid family leave tax credit, his expansion of child care and development block grants, and his creation of a provision allowing parents to withdraw up to $5,000 in retirement savings without penalty when they have a new child.

Of the Harris administration, she cited price increases that directly affected childcare, such as diapers, and recalled the baby formula shortage of 2022.

Hispanics

With the Hispanic/Latino population, Harris is likely to face more difficulty as that bloc is increasingly moving toward the GOP and Trump has already invested heavily in winning them over to his cause. The campaign launched the Latino Americans for Trump coalition in June with a message heavily emphasizing his economic message.

"President Trump understands the challenges Hispanic Americans are facing under the Biden Administration. Everything costs more,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said at the time. “His focus is on rebuilding this country and making life better for you and your family.”

Median weekly earnings among Hispanic/Latino Americans has steadily increased since Trump took office in 2017, albeit at varying rates. At the end of Q1 of that year, median weekly earnings stood at $649 for that demographic bloc. At the end of Q1 of 2021, they stood at $750. By Q1 of this year, they rose to $879. The Trump years witnessed a raw increase of 15.6% while under Biden, the figure rose 17.2%. But adjusted for inflation, the data tells a different story. The Trump years saw a real increase of 6.4% while the Biden years witnessed a real decrease of just under 0.6%.

When Trump took office in January of 2017, the unemployment rate among Hispanic/Latino workers stood at 5.9%, according to the BLS. In January 2021, that figure was 8.6%, largely due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In February of 2020, however, just ahead of the pandemic, Hispanic/Latino unemployment had fallen to 4.4%.

In July of 2024, it stood at 5.3%, up from the lows under Trump, but still significantly down from pandemic-era figures. Such data could provide Harris some much needed economic ammunition with which to appeal to the Hispanic/Latino community, but Trump has previously cast doubt on the veracity of BLS data.

Fueling his concerns was a revision of the jobs report this week in which the administration revised the total number of jobs created from April 2023 to March 2024 down by 818,000. It remains unclear how that revision could affect past unemployment rates.

But Trump has accused the Biden-Harris team of essentially cooking the books to provide favorable data, saying it has been “caught fraudulently manipulating Job Statistics to hide the true extent of the Economic Ruin they have inflicted upon America.”

The ripple effect of misleading jobs reports in recent months makes for an even more tenuous situation for the Federal Reserve and its weighing of interest rate cuts, a key element in the control of inflation.

Black Americans

Another key constituency of interest to both campaigns is the black community. Trump managed to win only 8% of that bloc in 2020, posting a modest increase from his 6% in 2016. But some polling has shown him clearing 20% in this cycle, albeit against Biden. The typically monolithic voting bloc has overwhelmingly backed the Democratic Party for decades, but even a modest uptick in black support for the GOP could swing key battlegrounds, such as Georgia, for Trump.

With this voter group, Trump’s economic record could resonate effectively in light of favorable data. For black Americans, median weekly earnings were $679 in Q1 of 2017 and rose to $799 in Q1 of 2021 before reaching $908 in Q1 of this year. The Trump years saw a raw increase of 17.6%, which comes in at 8.3% when adjusted for inflation. Biden’s time in office, meanwhile, saw a raw increase of 13.6%, a 3.6% drop when adjusted for inflation.

Unemployment data for black Americans follows a similar trend to Hispanic/Latino Americans. In January 2017, unemployment among black Aemricans stood at 7.7%. By January 2021, that figure was 9.2%. Prior to the pandemic, the figure was 5.8% in February of 2020. Black unemployment came in at 6.3% in July of this year.

That data presents a less volatile metric than Hispanic/Latino unemployment, which nearly doubled during the pandemic, but the overall trend remains the same. Prior to the pandemic, black unemployment declined under Trump, subsequently increased due to the pandemic, but has settled down, albeit at higher levels than pre-pandemic lows, under Biden.

The Trump campaign has further sought to highlight Trump’s economic record with the black community, launching the Black Americans for Trump coalition in June as well. Closely resembling the pro-Trump Latino coalition, the campaign centered its messaging around economic issues.

"President Trump knows that Black voters prefer lower taxes, which he delivered in his first term, and like all Americans, oppose Biden’s hiking tax rates. Ultimately, President Trump's economic policies offered more opportunities to build generational wealth for Black families,” Trump Campaign Black Media Director Janiyah Thomas told Just the News at the time.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X.