Although he won’t inherit an economy in crisis, as did his predecessor, President-elect Donald Trump will confront a broad range of challenges when he takes the oath of office on Friday.
From problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs to the Obama administration’s stonewalling of open records requests, Trump has a number of hurdles to clear in his effort to fulfill his campaign promises.
Here are some of the numbers that will matter to the incoming Trump administration.
Trump’s jobs numbers
The president-elect offered few promises more forcefully than his pledge to bring back jobs that had left the country and to create new ones in the process. Trump often spoke of the “forgotten men and women” whose economic plights were no longer a concern of the Obama administration.
President Obama frequently touted the fact that he had slashed the unemployment rate from its peak of 10.2 percent in October 2009. While it’s true that Obama brought that number down significantly, critics have pointed to the drop in the labor force participation rate as evidence that his economic recovery has not helped as many people as his administration claims.
Millions of people have given up looking for jobs or have accepted jobs that don’t pay as much as they earned previously. Under Obama, the use of food stamps saw a dramatic expansion as millions more people signed up for the program.
Trump’s immigration numbers
Trump has vowed to step up enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws along with his hallmark pledge to construct a wall along the southern border.
He has also suggested that he will review avenues of legal immigration, such as the H-1B visa program for skilled workers, and determine whether to push for a reduction.
Obama deported a surprisingly high number of illegal immigrants last year, with most of those deportations coming at or near the U.S. border rather than from within the country.
Trump’s veterans numbers
Trump faces an uphill battle when it comes to fixing the rampant problems at many VA hospitals around the country.
The VA is still struggling to process disability and pension claims from veterans who have earned VA benefits to pay for their care.
Nearly three years after the wait-time scandal that rocked the VA, many veterans still cannot get a doctor appointment at the VA in a timely fashion.
Trump’s 10-point plan for VA reform includes a provision that would allow veterans to bypass the VA system completely and seek care in the private sector if they want to avoid the long wait times found at many VA facilities around the country.
Trump’s transparency numbers
Although the Obama administration promised to be the most transparent in history, its agencies blocked record numbers of Freedom of Information Act requests and fought increasing numbers of FOIA requests in court using taxpayer money.
The Justice Department will release the federal government’s FOIA data from 2016 next week, on Jan. 27. The annual FOIA report will almost certainly include a spike in the number of requests still collecting dust thanks to heightened interest in records related to Hillary Clinton’s emails and to the FBI’s subsequent investigation of those emails.
The State Department noted repeatedly last year that its records office had gotten overwhelmed with FOIA requests, and those requests won’t go away just because Obama’s presidency is over.
