jobs

Trump posting critical economic numbers on Truth Social is 'nuts': ex-treasury official

Former Treasury Assistant Secretary Aaron Klein warned that President Donald Trump broke dangerous rules by sharing embargoed jobs report data Thursday night on social media.

“This jobs data moves whole markets,” said Klein, speaking on CNN. “You'll see the stock market move because the bond market will move because they're not sure what's going on in terms of the federal reserve. … This data is deeply guarded. It is released at once, released before the markets open at 8:30 in the morning.”

“Very few people have access to this data,” said Klein, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. “I used to when I worked on Capitol hill, and I was a top staffer. The Joint Economic Committee would hold a hearing on this data, and you'd have to be in a lockup. You'd be in a locked room. … You couldn't have your phone or computer or anything. I'm in the lockup. Right? So, like, that's top-secret stuff that is market moving. That is legal stuff. And, for Trump to throw that on his website is nuts.”

The information that Trump was so eager to release actually preceded additional information revealing a sluggish economy in his first year, despite inheriting vigorous growth from former President Joe Biden.

“Well, look, Trump inherited — that’s been the story of his entire life okay? Trump inherited a strong economy. Then he started messing around with trade. He created a bunch of uncertainty. He moved data around,” said Klein. “… The tariffs on again, off again on again, off again. Maybe so. Maybe not — we don't know. And there's been a lot of movement up and down. But if you look over a whole year now, we have a whole year's worth of jobs data. You find an economy that came in with a lot of momentum and it's slowing and stalling a little bit.”

Klein added that the wealthy at the top of the U.S. market now “control so much of the wealth that they're able to perpetuate the economy” on their own, while the bottom group “is struggling and feeling uncertain.”

Watch the video below.

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Trump's signature policy is 'collapsing under basic arithmetic': analysis

"It’s not just that American manufacturing under President Donald Trump is shrinking,” argued journalist David Shuster on his Blue Amp Substack. “It’s that U.S. manufacturing is shrinking under a lunatic who never tires of boasting that he alone can make U.S. manufacturing great again.”

Despite Trump hammering former President Joe Biden on his economy in the months leading up to Trump’s election, Shuster observed that U.S. manufacturing actually grew under Biden.

“Output climbed to record levels. Investment poured into factories, supply chains stabilized following the Covid hurdles, and the dull, unglamorous business of making things regained a measure of dignity. The boost in U.S. manufacturing was achieved not with chest-thumping speeches or tariff tantrums, but with policies designed for the real world—predictability, infrastructure, and a government that did not wake up each morning looking for a trade war to fight,” Shuster wrote.

But then came Trump 2.0 and his tariffs. Shuster – a former CNN, Fox News and NBC reporter – pointed out that manufacturing has yet to recover from the wave of tariffs Trump imposed last spring.

“The result has been a manufacturing sector retreat — contracting for ten straight months, a sustained decline that no amount of Trump shrieking and podium pounding can wish away,” said Shuster, citing The Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) manufacturing index falling to 47.9 from November’s 48.2 reading, the lowest of 2025.

Shuster said Trump tariffs have hit the economy like a “recurring fever: raising costs for manufacturers, snarling supply chains, and making long-term planning an exercise in guesswork.”

Investment hides when steel, aluminum, and component costs balloon overnight and are under threat of exploding tomorrow, said Shuster. And manufacturing thrives on “boring” things like “stability, clarity, and predictability,” not Trump’s favorite attributes of “uncertainty” and “unpredictability.”

“The MAGA crowd may roar. But economists wince and U.S. factories quietly scale back,” he said.

Furthermore, protectionism is not muscular patriotism, as Trump claims. It is a tax paid by producers and passed on to consumers. It is also “absorbed by workers when factory orders diminish and shifts are cut.”

“It is nationalism for people who do not read balance sheets, including the MAGA nutjobs,” Shuster said.

Meanwhile, Trump economic appointees like economic advisor Kevin Hassett and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insist manufacturing pain is brief when confronted with hard reality and statistics, which Shuster said is the same argument "made by every economic quack throughout the industrial age: endure the harm now and trust the miracle will arrive later." But manufacturers aren't buying it.

If American manufacturing is going to recover, Shuster said it will not be salvaged “by slogans or by a deranged President Trump who mistakes chaos for strength.”

“U.S. manufacturing will recover once White House policy is grounded in economic sense rather than applause lines. Until then, Trump’s vision of industrial revival remains a noisy farce, highlighted by bluster, and collapsing under basic arithmetic,” he said.

Read Shuster’s report at his Substack link here

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'Trump knows he's in trouble': Expert says 'jobs recession' could cost GOP in midterms

One expert says President Donald Trump "knows he's in trouble" given how voters are perceiving his management of the economy, and that Republicans in Congress are fighting an uphill battle to stay in power after this fall's midterm elections.

In a Friday segment on MS NOW, former CNN host John Harwood – who is now a distinguished fellow at Duke University — said Americans connect the poor economy "directly" to Trump's tariffs on U.S. trade partners. He noted that despite Trump campaigning to undo economic conditions under former President Joe Biden "on day one," most Americans' conditions "have gotten a little worse" since Trump's second term began. He added that Trump's lack of focus on kitchen-table issues has only built up more resentment among the public.

"People can see that they've gotten worse because of things he has done. He has done including these tariff policies. And they also see that he's not focused on their issues," Harwood said. "... He's focused on pardons, on starting a war with Venezuela, on renaming the Kennedy Center and doing all sorts of things that are not about the pocketbook of the average person."

Currently, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is weighing whether to uphold Trump's tariffs that he imposed under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977. Harwood predicted that Republicans would secretly "be delighted" if SCOTUS invalidated Trump's tariffs, as it would improve the economy and " reduce some of the crazy uncertainty that businesses have to deal with." Still, Harwood observed that the jobs market would likely remain difficult for Americans looking for full-time employment in 2026, and that those Americans would hold that against the GOP majority in November.

"Americans know that jobs are harder to get now than they were a year ago. The labor market has cooled down considerably. There hasn't been much job creation lately," he said. "You can't talk people out of that, just like you can't talk them into thinking that their grocery costs have gone down."

"We're not in a what economists call a recession because the GDP is still growing," he continued. "But for all practical purposes, a jobs recession is what ordinary Americans think of as a recession, right? ... It's going in the wrong direction and it's going in the wrong direction as they head into an election year. Republicans know it. This is one of the reasons why Democrats are headed for a strong midterm election unless things change."

Watch Harwood's segment below:

- YouTube www.youtube.com

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Trump official admits 7 straight months of job losses in key sector

When President Donald Trump first imposed his "Liberation Day" tariffs in spring of 2025, he aimed to incentivize companies to make products in the United States and bolster hiring in the manufacturing sector. However, one administration official is now admitting the president's key economic policy has had the opposite effect.

During a recent interview on CNBC, Kevin Hassett – who is the director of the National Economic Council favored to be appointed as the next Federal Reserve chairman – admitted to host Carl Quintanilla that the U.S. economy had seen seven straight months of losses in the manufacturing sector according to figures released from November of 2025. However, Hassett maintained that the trend would reverse in 2026.

"We've been tracking groundbreakings of all these factories that have come forward from both the trade deals, like the drug companies on-shoring production for national security reasons, and we're up to around 30 groundbreakings since September," he said. "All those are going to create a lot of jobs moving into next year."

Financial journalist and commentator Brian Allen was skeptical of Hassett's claims, writing on X: "Under Donald Trump, America has now seen seven straight months of manufacturing job losses. Seven."

"While he sells 'America First' slogans, working Americans keep getting pink slips," he wrote. "This isn’t leadership. It’s economic erosion dressed up as patriotism."

The data also doesn't support the administration's bullish outlook on manufacturing jobs. According to a CNN report from late December, "industries that rely on manual labor are cutting jobs, not adding them." The network cited figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics finding that traditional blue-collar industries have been steadily shedding employees throughout the bulk of last year.

"You can’t say the economy is doing really well if these jobs aren’t growing alongside it," Fundstrat Global Advisors economic strategist Hardika Singh told CNN.

Watch the clip of Hassett's remarks below:

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Trump's favorite 3-word claim dismantled in scathing fact-check

MS NOW data journalist Philip Bump says President Donald Trump’s claims of the U.S. being "the hottest country" so far only pertains to its climate. Economically, the U.S. is trailing behind its global competition.

“President Donald Trump, never restrained about his use of hyperbole, has settled on a succinct summary of the first year of his second term," said Bump, citing a Dec. 11 declaration that international leaders personally told him we’re the hottest, and his repeat of the claim during his prime-time address on Dec. 17.

“We’re the hottest country anywhere in the world,” Trump said into the camera. “And that’s said by every single leader that I’ve spoken to over the last five months.”

The numbers don’t support his claim in terms of the nation’s stock prices, however. The Dow Jones Industrial Average may have hit a new high, the 52nd of the year, said Bump, but several foreign indexes — including many in Asia — have outperformed the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 since Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20. Even the foreign indexes hammered by Trump’s announcement of April tariffs have not only rebounded, but some have surpassed the U.S. indexes “despite having fallen just as far after Jan. 20,” said Bump.

In addition, Bump said the U.S. is also not the hottest on GDP growth, with India’s third-quarter increase almost double that of the U.S.. India also beat out the U.S. on job growth, with job growth in the U.S. mostly flat since April.

This is odd, said Bump because U.S. indexes don’t usually trail foreign ones during Year Ones.

And Trump’s market doesn’t even compare to that of many recent presidents’ first years, when added up.

“Year Ones have outperformed 2025, including Trump’s first Year One, in 2017,” said Bump. “And however much Trump dislikes hearing it, there was more stock market growth by Christmas in the first year of Joe Biden’s administration than recorded during Trump’s presidency this year.”

What’s more, Bump said during four of the seven presidential Year Ones since 2001, the average of U.S. indexes outperformed the average of the seven international indexes, which is something Trump cannot claim.

“There is, however, one measure by which the U.S. is inarguably among the hottest countries in the world: actual temperature,” Bump added. “Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicates that North America just experienced its second-warmest autumn on record and its hottest November.”

Read Bump's full MS NOW column at this link.

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Trump is pointlessly trying to resurrect jobs that 'aren't coming back': Washington Post

Politicians and President Donald Trump sell the vision of a manufacturing renaissance, but the Washington Post Editorial Board argues their vision of “massive factories employing thousands of people” are not possible in real-life America.

“Some places have had manufacturing renaissances,” reports the Post, citing its coverage of Bridgeport, Connecticut, with an old manufacturing city allegedly sputtering “back to life,” according to the headline.

Once the home of Remington and divisions of General Electric, which filed for bankruptcy in 1991, the area is now serving vocational education programs that are helping workers without college degrees cultivate welding and technician skills, which almost guarantee careers.

It was a “feel-good story politicians want to hear,” writes the Post, though the paper observed that the hard truth of re-emerging factory jobs “barely registered” in the overall data on Bridgeport’s economy. Manufacturing employment in the Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury metropolitan statistical area saw only “a small bump” and remains near 30-year lows, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Real manufacturing output in the Bridgeport metro area has been rising but is also quite low compared to before the Great Recession, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis,” the Post reports. “The turnaround in the past few years is that manufacturing is no longer a drag on Bridgeport’s GDP growth, as it was during most years since the Great Recession. It flipped positive in 2021” — But is has remained “barely above zero” since then.

The problem, according the Post, is that the new jobs “are relatively few in number,” however high in compensation.

“These newer, successful manufacturing companies in Bridgeport don’t have assembly lines with workers performing repetitive tasks. They have high-skilled workers meeting exacting specifications for a relatively small number of picky customers,” said the Post. “That’s what most American manufacturing firms look like today. Ninety-eight percent of U.S. manufacturing firms employ fewer than 500 people, and 93 percent employ fewer than 100, according to 2022 data.”

The “manufacturing” jobs actually employ more robots than anything, per the Post's editorial. Automation makes them extremely productive, and more productive workers are paid more, but it still means fewer people work in manufacturing than in the past.

“Pro-manufacturing politicians face a choice,” says the Post. “They can applaud the success of places like Bridgeport while conceding that manufacturing isn’t a jobs juggernaut. Or they can continue to yearn for the mass-production plants of yesteryear, which aren’t coming back. Even if they did, they would yield worse, lower-paying jobs than the high-tech manufacturing plants of today.”

Read the Post's editorial at this link.

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Economist shreds Trump's latest excuse for rising unemployment

President Donald Trump is now arguing that the uptick in the national unemployment rate is simply a byproduct of him enacting his agenda. One highly regarded economist is crying foul.

On Friday, Trump posted to his Truth Social account that the 4.6 percent unemployment rate — which is the highest in four years — could be attributed to his hollowing out of government agencies. He boasted that his administration is "reducing the Government Workforce by numbers that have never been seen before."

"100% OF OUR NEW JOBS ARE IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR! I could reduce Unemployment to 2% overnight by just hiring people into the Federal Government, even though those Jobs are not necessary," Trump wrote in his signature style of oddly placed capital letters. "I wish the Fake News would report the 4.5% correctly. What I am doing is the only way to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

Trump also insisted during a recent White House event that the higher unemployment rate still "sounds positive" and is "quite a low number." He added that "government jobs are way down."

However, economist Claudia Sahm – who is the namesake of the Sahm Rule used to predict economic recessions — wrote on her X account that she wanted to "raise a few issues with" Trump's claim. She cited figures from the Federal Reserve showing that the number of jobless workers between Trump's inauguration and November of 2025 had increased well beyond the number of federal workers who had been fired.

"There are 982,000 more unemployed people in Nov 2025 than in Jan 2025," Sahm wrote. "There are 271,000 fewer federal government employees."

"982,000 [is greater than] 271,000. More than 3 times more unemployed," she added.

As CBS News reported this week, the uptick in the unemployment rate can be largely attributed to the manufacturing and hospitality sectors slowing down hiring. Heather Long, who is the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, told the outlet that Trump's policies have directly led to the higher unemployment rate, along with artificial intelligence replacing many entry-level white-collar workers.

"Businesses are not hiring as they adjust to tariffs, uncertain conditions and AI," Long said. "The result is about 700,000 more unemployed Americans than there were a year ago."

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Karoline Leavitt's 'whopper' about a 'strong' job market shredded in blistering fact-check

MS NOW analyst Steve Benen said the Trump administration’s “strong” jobs report suggests they don’t know what “strong” means.

“White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s credibility couldn’t get much worse,” Benen wrote on Wednesday, pointing to Leavitt’s false claim that President Donald Trump created the slogan “drill, baby, drill and that “many states” are now seeing gas prices below $2 per gallon.

“But the whopper that stood out for me came earlier in the day, when she issued a written statement about the latest monthly jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” said Benen.

“The strong jobs report shows how President Trump is fixing the damage caused by Joe Biden and creating a strong, America First economy in record time,” Leavitt said, which prompted Benen to say “there may be some confusion about what ‘strong’ means.”

“The latest jobs report, released Tuesday morning, was quite awful,” Benen argued. “The U.S. unemployment rate has reached its highest level in more than four years, and job growth has slowed to a level that could charitably be described as anemic.”

In fact, a chart showing month-to-month changes to the job market since November 2020, when Trump lost his reelection bid to Biden, reveals significant growth out of the red. The Biden administration, comparatively, swam in a sea of high job growth throughout his four years — followed by a quick dip back into a Trump-style low-growth red zone as Trump returned to office in January of 2025.

“Indeed, the closer one looks, the worse the American job market appears,” said Benen. “According to the latest data, the economy actually lost jobs in June, August and October. When was the last time the U.S. economy had a net job loss three times in six months? Late 2009 into early 2010, when the job market was still trying to recover from the Great Recession.”

Worse, when Trump announced his Liberation Day trade tariffs in April, the nation had created a total of 119,000 jobs, per month, since he entered office, Benen said. But last year — when Trump said the economy was awful — the U.S. job market averaged nearly 168,000 jobs per month. This compares to Trump’s average 17,000 jobs per month.

“In fact, we remain very much on track to see the worst year for job creation since the Great Recession (excluding the massive losses associated with the pandemic in 2020),” said Benen. “If the president’s team looked at this data and saw a ‘strong’ jobs report, that might help explain why Trump is failing so spectacularly: The White House doesn’t even know what success looks like.”

Read the MS NOW report at this link.

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'Completely stagnated': Experts say 'extraordinary low' jobs numbers 'ominous' for economy

Economic experts are sounding alarms over the latest jobs report, showing the Trump economy added just 22,000 jobs in August — far below expectations of 75,000. The unemployment rate climbed to 4.3 percent, its highest level since October 2021, near the height of COVID.

“Another WEAK jobs report,” wrote Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal.

“The August jobs report shows the job market is going from frozen to cracking,” Long added. “The only thing keeping this from being a 5-alarm fire is the fact that the labor force grew by +436,000 people. That’s a surprise, especially given immigrants are leaving the U.S. labor force.”

Long also noted that the June report was revised down, to a loss of 13,000 jobs.

“Jobs growth remained extraordinarily low in August,” noted Steven Rattner, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” economic analyst and chairman of a prominent investment firm.

“The job market continues to slow, and it’s worrying. We’re (just) keeping our head above water (for now),” warned professor of economics Justin Wolfers, a popular cable news guest.

“I know the focus today is on ‘the numbers.’ But lemme share a feeling: I’m worried,” Wolfers added. “The economy was in a good place in late 2024. That’s no longer true. And the trajectory is, at a minimum, concerning. That’s millions of peoples lives, and millions of stories of pain.”

Veteran finance reporter Ron Insana noted that “the composition of the newly unemployed appears to be policy-driven. Government, trade services and manufacturing. Healthcare is keeping the number above water. Those gov’t workers getting severance aren’t yet counted as jobless. That changes next month!”

Long issued an additional warning.

“The US economy lost -13,000 jobs in June –>The first negative month since December 2020 (!) There’s barely been any job growth in the past 4 months. Almost all the jobs added are in healthcare. Without healthcare, job growth would be NEGATIVE in the past few months.”

Economics writer Joey Politano observed that “US blue-collar job growth has completely stagnated, hitting the lowest level since the onset of the pandemic—manufacturing is currently losing jobs at a rapid pace, and growth in construction/transportation has slowed to a crawl.”

He added, “the labor market is in the worst place since the pandemic.”

Hinting at the upcoming change in leadership at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, professor of economics Howard Forman wrote: “If this is, indeed, a more reliable report, it remains ominous.”

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'Can anyone spell recession?' Trump slammed as jobs report stuns economists

Payrolls processing firm ADP reported private sector hiring contracted unexpectedly in June, with private payrolls losing 33,000 jobs.

The news came as a surprise because economists polled by Dow Jones in the weeks ahead of the ADP report had forecast an increase of 100,000 jobs for the month, despite growth in May being revised to just 29,000 jobs rather than 37,000.

The bulk of job losses happened in professional and business services and health and education, according to ADP, with the Midwest and Western regions seeing the strongest contractions.

Social media exploded at the news, partially because economists had predicted a more stable and robust economy weathering the impact of President Donald Trump’s incessant tariff threats.

“Can anyone spell RECESSION?” posted New York legislator Jon Cooper.

“This must be a huge problem for Joe Biden, right?” quipped YouTube host David Pakman, referring to Trump’s habit of blaming his predecessor for economic bumps in Trump’s economy.

Pakman pointed out that the job losses amounted to the first “in over two years,” while political analyst Marco Frieri demanded: “Is that what they call ‘Making America Great Again’?”

On the same day of the ADP report, Chamber of Progress Director Tahra Hoops noted Trump congratulating himself on the strong U.S. economy.

“THIS GROWTH has already begun at levels never seen before,” Trump declared on Truth Social, which prompted Hoops to wonder what world Trump was inhabiting.

“He lives in an alternate universe,” Hoops posted. “… It's clear employers are growing weary over Trump tariff impacts and just the continuing levels of uncertainty,” Hoops added.

Public Notice writer Aaron Rupar, meanwhile, noticed Trump’s allies at Fox news initially playing down or ignoring the bad news.

“[Entertainer] Maria Bartiromo was just on Fox News to discuss economic news, but new data showing the private sector losing jobs last month didn't come up,” Rupar posted. “Instead, she and [entertainer] Dana Perino discussed Waffle House.”

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