White House economic official says Trump's tweet about US unemployment and GDP was wrong

A White House aide has said that Donald Trump was "wrong" about in tweets about America’s current unemployment and gross domestic product (GDP) rates are incorrect

When asked to address the US president’s claims about unemployment and GDP rates at the White House on Monday, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) Kevin Hassett, admitted that the president had his numbers .

“I can tell you what is true,” Mr Hassett said in response to laughter. “How errors happen is not something I can engage in.”

On Monday morning, Mr Trump tweeted: “The GDP Rate (4.2 %) is higher than the Unemployment rate (3.9%) for the first time in over 100 years!”

But Mr Hassett admitted that Mr Trump’s statements were not true; he corrected the president’s claims and said that it had been reportedly 10 years – not 100.

He also explained that he did not know the “chain of command” that led Mr Trump to apparently receive misinformation about the economy.

“What is true is that it’s the highest in 10 years, and at some point somebody probably conveyed it to him, adding a zero to that, and they shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “And I can say that at least we numbers geeks here at the White House are grateful when the press finds mistakes that we make – we don’t like making mistakes – but we’re grateful when they are pointed out, because we want to correct them.”

Mr Trump has continually boasted credit for improving the US economy. During a speech at the University of Illinois over the weekend, Former President Barack Obama, who took office during America’s Great Recession, told listeners to remember where “when this recovery started”.

Mr Trump’s assertion that the GDP is higher than the unemployment rate for the first time in a century is inconsistent with economic data from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics.

The annual rate of real GDP growth has exceeded the unemployment rate multiple times since 1948.

During the press briefing, Mr Hassett told reporters they would have to “talk to the president” about where his numbers came from.