Donald Trump announced to the world that he has officially settled and named Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate. One thing that Trump has touted the most about Pence is his handling of unemployment and creation of jobs while governor of Indiana.

“Indiana, their unemployment rate has fallen, when he was there, when he started, 8.4 percent when he was governor, when he took over, to less than 5 percent in May of 2016,” Trump told the crowd yesterday. “Since January 2013, Indiana’s labor force has increased by more than 186,000 jobs. You have to understand, I’ve gone around to all these states. I’ve gone to all of them. And every time, I have statisticians. I say give me the stats on a state. And it’s always bad, down, down, down. Down 40 percent, 50 percent, 60 percent in some cases. Here’s somebody where it’s gone up. Private sector job growth is up by more than 147,000 jobs since 2013. That’s like very unusual.”

Far from being “like very unusual,” Indiana’s unemployment decline and job growth mirror the national numbers very closely. Indiana was fending off unemployment at a slightly higher rate than the rest of the nation until the last few months, when the unemployment rate in Indiana rose from 4.5% to 5.0%. To visualize, here are graphs from The Washington Post:

Job creation in Indiana has actually done slightly worse than the national average during Pence’s tenure.

The other claim that Trump rattles off at the end that job growth is “down 40 percent, 50 percent, 60 percent in some cases,” is ludicrous. Unemployment is only up in six states nationally, the worst of which North Dakota, where unemployment is up 3%. A completely false claim inserted into this speech to help bolster the mediocre performance of Trump’s mediocre choice for Vice President.

Source:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/16/mike-pences-jobs-record-in-indiana-was-a-lot-more-average-than-donald-trump-suggested/?tid=sm_tw_pp&wprss=rss_the-fix
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/fact-checking-trump-s-first-appearance-running-mate-mike-pence-n610871