The American job market, a pillar of U.S. economic strength since the pandemic, is crumbling under the weight of President Donald Trump’s erratic economic policies.
Uncertain about where things are headed, companies have grown increasingly reluctant to hire, leaving agonized jobseekers unable to find work and weighing on consumers who account for 70% of all U.S. economic activity. Their spending has been the engine behind the world’s biggest economy since the COVID-19 disruptions of 2020.
The Labor Department reported Friday that U.S. employers — companies, government agencies and nonprofits — added just 22,000 jobs last month, down from 79,000 in July and well below the 80,000 that economists had expected.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3% last month, also worse than expected and the highest since 2021.
“U.S. labor market deterioration intensified in August,’’ Scott Anderson, chief U.S. economist at BMO Capital Market, wrote in a commentary, noting that hiring was “slumping dangerously close to stall speed. This raises the risk of a harder landing for consumer spending and the economy in the months ahead.’’
Alexa Mamoulides, 27, was laid off in the spring from a job at a research publishing company and has been hunting for work ever since. She uses a spreadsheet to track her progress and said she’s applied for 111 positions and had 14 interviews — but hasn’t landed a job yet.
https://apnews.com/article/jobs-economy-unemployment-trump-firing-f686eab61f7d6b702ca10b12b0250498
Economists are warning that US President Donald Trump’s efforts to meddle with the Federal Reserve are going to wind up raising prices even further on working families.
Michael Madowitz, principal economist at the Roosevelt Institute, said on Wednesday that the president’s efforts to strong-arm the US central bank into lowering interest rates by firing Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook would backfire by accelerating inflation.
“The administration’s efforts to politicize interest rates—an authoritarian tactic—will ultimately hurt American families by driving up costs,” he said. “That helps explain why Fed independence has helped keep inflation under 3%, while, after years of political interference in their central bank, Turkey’s inflation rate is over 33%.”
Heidi Shierholz, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, said that the president’s move to fire Cook “radically undermines what Trump says his own goal is: lowering U.S. interest rates to spur faster economic growth.”
She then gave a detailed explanation for why Trump imposing his will on the Federal Reserve would likely bring economic pain.
“Presidential capture of the Fed would signal to decision-makers throughout the economy that interest rates will no longer be set on the basis of sound data or economic conditions—but instead on the whims of the president,” she argued. “Confidence that the Fed will respond wisely to future periods of macroeconomic stress—either excess inflation or unemployment—will evaporate.”
This lack of confidence, she continued, would manifest in investors in US Treasury bonds demanding higher premiums due to the higher risks they will feel they are taking when buying US debt, which would only further drive up the nation’s borrowing costs.
“These higher long-term rates will ripple through the economy—making mortgages, auto loans, and credit card payments higher for working people—and require that rates be held higher for longer to tamp down any future outbreak of inflation,” she said. “In the first hours after Trump’s announcement, all of these worries seemed to be coming to pass.”
Economist Paul Krugman, a former columnist for The New York Times, wrote on his personal Substack page Thursday that Trump’s moves to take control of the Federal Reserve were “shocking and terrifying.”
“Trump’s campaign to take over monetary policy has shifted from a public pressure to personal intimidation of Fed officials: the attack on Cook signals that Trump and his people will try to ruin the life of anyone who stands in his way,” he argued. “There is now a substantial chance that the Fed’s independence, its ability to manage the nation’s monetary policy on an objective, technocratic basis rather than as an instrument of the president’s political interests and personal whims, will soon be gone.”
The economists’ warnings come as economic data released on Friday revealed that core inflation rose to 2.9% in August, which is the highest annual rate recorded since this past February. Earlier this month, the Producer Price Index, which is considered a leading indicator of future inflation, came in at 3.3%, which was significantly higher than economists’ consensus estimate of 2.5%.
Data aggregated by polling analyst G. Elliott Morris shows that inflation is far and away Trump’s biggest vulnerability, as American voters give him a net approval of -23% on that issue.
According to new data from a The Economist/YouGov poll, President Donald Trump‘s approval rating among Black voters has significantly dropped over the past few months.
Trump’s ratings plunge
Trump’s net approval rating among Black voters has fallen by 25 points since May. In the latest poll, just 11 percent of Black respondents approve of Trump’s job performance, while 84% disapprove — putting his net approval at -73. Previous polls showed a steady decline. Earlier this year, Trump’s net approval among Black voters was -47; it dropped to -54 in June, -64 in July and now -73 in August.
Losing support
Black voters were the least supportive demographic group across major policy areas, including the economy and inflation. Only 9 percent claimed they approved of Trump’s decision making with jobs and the economy, which is down from 24% in May. In contrast, approval among white voters stood at 47% and 38% among Hispanic voters.
Drop on inflation
Support among Black voters on Trump’s handling of inflation also fell — just 8% expressed approval, down from 19% in May. White voters showed 41% approval, while Hispanic voters came in at 34%.
Experts weigh in
Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University, told Newsweek, “The deterioration in Trump approval among Black voters suggests they likely oppose his policies and believe he has failed to deliver on campaign promises that were top priorities for them, especially on the economy. … The administration’s actions on things like affirmative action and other policies that are important to Black voters also do not sit well with these voters. Even symbolic actions, like erasing ‘Black Lives Matter’ plaza in Washington, D.C., take a toll on Black support for the president.”
Critics have not spared Donald Trump since his reign began for the second time in January. Now, George Conway, a conservative attorney, has also warned Americans about what might happen to the nation if his administration continues its endeavors. Conway, who has been a longtime vocal critic of Trump, commented that he is steering the United States toward a grave constitutional crisis.
He made those remarks in a report on the ongoing turmoil in Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahu’s government voted to fire the attorney general who is prosecuting him over a corruption case. Although the Supreme Court has blocked the move pending judicial review, one government minister is prepared to ignore the decision. Conway provided the ordeal as an example of what Donald Trump might try to do next in America.
He tweeted, “Mark my words. Trump will defy our Supreme Court, too. It’s just a matter of time.” His comments came after the Trump administration tried to dodge a bunch of Supreme Court orders since his second term began. For example, in the Kilmer Abergo Garcia case, as part of the immigration crackdown, ICE wrongfully detained and sent Garcia to the notorious El Salvador prison, a facility known for its extreme conditions. His case created a vast controversy, especially when the administration threatened to ignore strong court orders against it.
Meanwhile, Karl Rove, a longtime Republican strategist, noted that Donald Trump’s problematic moves could cost him badly. During a Fox News interview over the weekend, he noted that the President is losing his strong grounds, which could result in a bad outcome during next year’s midterm elections.
“While he has strengthened the support among right-leaning Republicans, he has also sort of lost ground among independents, who at this point are disposed to say, ‘I’m voting Democrat in the midterm election,” Rove said, as per Huff Post.
“To me, what’s ironic is, is that the Trump administration is making the same mistake that the Biden administration made,” the strategist added. He explained that there were mostly three issues that got Trump elected: the economy, the border, and inflation. While the President is definitely working on border issues, inflation and the economy seem to be the least priorities for his administration right now.
“Well, now we have ‘the golden age of American prosperity has returned,’ and Americans are not feeling that. I think that’s a big mistake for the White House and is likely to come back and bite ’em in the midterm elections,” Rove concluded.
For Americans concerned about inflation and consumer costs, recent developments have been discouraging. Two weeks ago, for example, the public learned that the Consumer Price Index climbed unexpectedly in June, amid signs that Donald Trump’s trade tariffs were pushing prices higher.
This week, the disappointing news continued as the Commerce Department reported the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index — a metric that’s closely watched by the Federal Reserve for evidence of inflation — is also climbing, and as The New York Times reported, the data represented “the latest sign that President Trump’s tariffs are starting to bleed through into consumer prices.”
Then Trump sat down with New York Post columnist Miranda Devine and made a rather specific claim, not only about the key economic issue, but about his perceived successes.
“You know, if you think, inflation, I’ve already taken care of,” the president claimed. “Prices are way down for everything — groceries, everything.”
Certainly this is the official White House line, with a variety of administration officials pushing nearly identical rhetoric.
But reality won’t budge. As the Trump administration’s own data shows, grocery costs have gone up since the president returned to the Oval Office, not down.
A couple of weeks ago at a White House event for a Republican audience, Trump said Democrats “lie” when they say the prices of food and groceries have gone up, but as a CNN report noted soon after, “Nonsense. It’s correct, not a lie, to say overall prices, grocery prices and food prices in general are up during this presidency.”
This was one of the critical issues of the 2024 race, and the Republican president is clearly failing — both to deliver the results he promised and to tell the truth about reality.
Throughout last year, then-candidate Trump was repeatedly asked about his plan to lower consumer prices. Common sense suggested he would’ve prepared at least some kind of coherent answer, but that never happened. He simply said it would all work out wonderfully once he returned to power.
As prices climb, the president could acknowledge the facts and perhaps even accept some responsibility, but he prefers to play make-believe.
Last year, as Joe Biden prepared to leave his successor a great American economy, Donald Trump tried to claim credit for robust growth. To hear the Republican tell it, investors and “job creators” were so excited about the mere possibility of Trump returning to power that their gleeful anticipation sent the economy soaring.
After Trump’s second inaugural, however, the U.S. economy struggled, at which point the Republican president changed his mind: The discouraging news, he said, was Biden’s fault.
In fact, in late April, the Commerce Department released GDP data that showed the U.S. economy shrinking in the first quarter of the year (January through March). One day later, Trump not only blamed his Democratic predecessor, he said that the public should probably get ready to blame Biden for the GDP in the second quarter (April through June), too.
At the time, the incumbent president feared that the economy would continue to struggle in the spring and early summer, so he wanted to lay the groundwork early to deflect responsibility. Exactly three months later, however, the Commerce Department reported that the economy grew in the second quarter, and wouldn’t you know it, Trump decided it didn’t have anything to do with Biden after all. CNBC reported:
The U.S. economy grew at a much stronger-than-expected pace in the second quarter, powered by a turnaround in the trade balance and renewed consumer strength, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Gross domestic product, a sum of goods and services activity across the sprawling U.S. economy, jumped 3% for the April through June period, according to figures adjusted for seasonality and inflation.
While the president was predictably eager to tout the data, the details and larger context matter. As The New York Times reported, the figures from both quarters were skewed “by big swings in trade and inventories caused by President Trump’s ever-shifting tariff policies.”
The Times added, “Taken as a whole, the data from the first six months of the year tell a more consistent story of anemic, though positive, economic growth.”
A Reuters report came to a similar conclusion, noting that the data from the second quarter masked “underlying weakness” in the domestic economy, adding that the top-line figures “grossly overstated the economy’s health as declining imports accounted for the bulk of the improvement and domestic demand rose at its slowest pace” in two-and-a-half years.
With this in mind, I expect to hear Trump trying to explain why he deserves credit for the headline on the new report showing economic growth, but Biden deserves blame for the relevant details in the same data.
