Donald Trump is right, this is the worst recovery since the Great Depression

Donald Trump is fond of saying Americans are living through the worst recovery in modern times.

He blames President Obama for the sluggish economy and claims he can do far better.

“Now look, we have the worst revival of an economy since the Great Depression,” Trump said in the first debate. His running mate Mike Pence mentioned it in the vice presidential debate Tuesday night.

Trump is right if you look solely at the average rate of growth during this rebound versus prior ones.

“In terms of the average pace of GDP growth, this is the slowest expansion on record,” says Lakshman Achuthan, co-founder of the Economic Cycle Research Institute.

The U.S. economy has only grown 2% a year since it bottomed out in June 2009. That’s far below the typical growth in rosy times of over 4% a year that the U.S. has experienced since World War II. It’s even below the rather sluggish rebound during President George W. Bush’s tenure of 2.7%.

So it’s a fair statement. There is data to back up Trump’s claim (at least since just after World War II when the government started keeping quarterly records), but it comes with a big asterisk.

But it’s a long U.S. expansion

Plenty of experts say “hold on.” This recovery may be slow, but it’s also lasted a long time — far longer than usual — and job growth has been good.

“We are in the fourth longest expansion in U.S. history,” notes Achuthan.