Donald Trump is heading to the White House with a pledge to revive the U.S. economy and put millions of Americans back to work.
Based on the latest economic data, much of that goal has already been accomplished by President Barack Obama. That includes Friday's employment report that showed the unemployment rate had dropped to a nine year low of 4.6 percent.
Americans voters' widespread anxiety about the economy played a major role in the 2016 election. Trump's broad promises to restore widely shared prosperity, with little policy details spelled out, helped him win what many saw as as upset victory.
The underpinnings of that popular economic anxiety, though, are well defined. Since peaking in 1979, American manufacturing employment has shrunk by a third — a loss of more than 7 million jobs. Millions more discouraged, able-bodied workers faced with shrinking job options have left the work force, apparently for good.
Yet millions more older workers approaching retirement have set aside savings only to cover less than a year's expenses. And the next generation is entering the workforce financially handicapped by unprecedented levels of student debt.
So it's no surprise that the incoming Trump administration is eager to quell that groundswell of household angst by promising to boost the pace of economic growth to levels not seen in a generation.
"Our most important priority is sustained economic growth, and I think we can absolutely get to sustained 3 to 4 percent GDP, and that is absolutely critical for the country," Steven Mnuchin, Trump's choice for Treasury secretary, told CNBC on Wednesday.
But if GDP growth alone is the benchmark for Americans' financial well-being, the Trump administration will inherit an economy that is well on its way to fulfilling his campaign promises.
Today, some eight years after the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, many forecasters see the long-overdue recovery finally picking up steam. "The economy is starting to hit on almost all cylinders," Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors, said after reviewing the latest report on GDP growth.
The Commerce Department on Tuesday boosted its estimate of third-quarter gross domestic product to a 3.2 percent annual rate, up from the previous estimate of 2.9 percent. That's just 8-tenths of a percent shy of Trump's GDP growth target.
Like most presidents, Trump's term in office will be measured by historians, at least in part, by his stewardship of the U.S. economy. American voters will also have a chance to weigh in when they go to the polls four years from now.
If the recovery continues to build momentum, will history credit Trump or Obama?
For his part, Obama has vigorously defended his economic record over the last eight years, starting with his administration's response to the worst economic crisis in nearly a century. That record includes signing the 2009 Recovery Act, reversing a wave of layoffs that peaked at more than 800,000 in a single month.
"Anybody who says we are not absolutely better off today than we were just seven years ago — they're not leveling with you," Obama said in February. "They're not telling the truth. By almost every economic measure, we are significantly better off."
Trump would not be the first president (or governor, or mayor) to take credit for the accomplishments of his or her predecessor. Much of the groundwork for the 1980s national prosperity of the Reagan administration, for example, was laid by the politically painful policy of double-digit, inflation-killing interest rates engineered by fiercely independent Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.
But jobs numbers and top line GDP numbers mask the much more complex impact of today's economic crosswinds on the financial well-being of American families, still recovering from the trillions of dollars of household wealth wiped out by the loss of foreclosed homes, investment savings and lost paychecks after the wave of U.S. mortgage lending fraud that sparked the 2008 global financial collapse.
To better assess the accomplishments and unfulfilled agenda of the Obama administration, and assess its place in history, CNBC.com analyzed a broad swath of data to compare the economic records of the last six presidents. We looked at a variety of measures, calculating the net change from the start of a president's term to the end, beginning with Jimmy Carter's inauguration in January 1977. (Our data is current as of July when the analysis was first done during the presidential campaign.)
Here are a dozen charts showing what we found.