Boy, who’s Trump going to fire for this dismal jobs report?
U.S. employers added just 22,000 jobs in August, according to a report Friday from the Labor Department. The unemployment rate inched up 4.3%. Revised figures also show there was also a net loss of jobs in June for the first time since 2020, in the midst of the pandemic.
The U.S. has now had four months in a row of pretty anemic job growth. Average job growth between May and August was down 75% from the same period a year ago [Scott Horsley, “Cracks in the U.S. Economy: Job Growth Slows 75% from a Year Ago,” NPR: All things Considered, 2025.09.05].
The more deeply you read this report, the worse things get:
Black unemployment was up, this month and over the last year, with nearly 350,000 more Black people out-of-work. The Hispanic unemployment rate has also edged higher over the last few months.
Overall unemployment — that’s the so-called U-6 rate, which includes people marginally attached to the labor force and part-time for economic reasons — up over 8%.
And long-term unemployment (26 weeks or more) was up above 25% of job-seekers, for the first time since the pandemic in 2021 [Mitchell Hartman, “There Are Worrying Signs Buried in the August Jobs Report,” Marketplace, 2025.09.05].
Trump’s “disturbed, hateful, conspiracy-driven” pick to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics hasn’t been confirmed yet, so BLS staff can still insist that their numbers are legit:
With a new, sobering jobs report out Friday, some current employees at the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are seeking to reassure the American public that the government’s economic data is reliable and worthy of their trust.
“Our job is to deliver economic data guided by law and statistical practice —not partisan whim,” they wrote in a statement read aloud at a rally outside the Labor Department’s Washington, D.C. headquarters on Friday morning by Helen Lurie.…
Their statement comes about a month after President Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarferfollowing a weak July jobs report. Without citing evidence, Trump claimed the numbers had been rigged to make him look bad. He also accused McEntarfer of manipulating the jobs numbers before last November’s presidential election in an effort to get Kamala Harris elected.
The current BLS employees called McEntarfer’s firing alarming and said she should be reinstated.
“Dr. McEntarfer did nothing wrong. No serious observer claims otherwise. Commissioners don’t ‘cook’ the numbers; they don’t even see them until after the estimates are complete,” they wrote.
…”BLS publishes its sources, publishes its methods, and its data revisions follow a set schedule,” they wrote. “The public doesn’t have to guess whether the job numbers are real.”
The BLS employees said they would not be intimated and vowed to publish reliable data, “no matter how inconvenient the results.”
“The numbers will remain accurate and nonpartisan,” they wrote. “And if that ever changes, the professionals will tell you” [Andrea Hsu, “You Can Trust the Jobs Report, Labor Department Workers Urge Public,” NPR, 2025.09.05].
Trump could root out those BLS truth-tellers and fire them, but that would just continue his streak of bad decisions that kill jobs:
Health care, a reliable jobs engine the past couple of years, again drove the payroll gains with 31,000. And leisure and hospitality, which includes restaurants and bars, added 28,000. But professional and business services shed 17,000; manufacturing, which has been buffeted by the tariffs, lost 12,000 and is down 78,000 jobs this year, defying Trump’s claims of a manufacturing revival as makers bring production back to the U.S. Construction lost 7,000 jobs.
The public sector lost 16,000 jobs, including 15,000 by the federal government, which is down 97,000 positions so far this year under the Trump administration’s massive federal layoffs.
…Trump’s immigration crackdown – which includes deportations and stricter border enforcement – has crimped the supply of workers in industries such as agriculture, construction and hospitality. Job growth in such industries fell to an average 4,000 a month in the second quarter compared to an average 27,000 monthly in 2024, Goldman said [Paul Davidson, “Economy Adds Disappointing 22,000 JObs in August, Jobs Report Shows. Unemployment Rises,” USA Today, 2025.09.05].
Economist Mark Zandi agrees that this “jobs recession” comes largely from Trump’s bad policymaking:
“Manufacturing, transportation, distribution, mining, agriculture, construction—they’re all getting hit pretty hard,” he said.
Much of that pain, he argued, stems directly from policy. Higher tariffs are weighing on manufacturers and exporters, while immigration restrictions are constraining the supply of workers in industries that rely heavily on lower-skilled labor, such as construction, agriculture, retail, and hospitality.
“You can connect the dots between economic policy and the weak economy,” Zandi said. “The trade policy—higher tariffs—and the restrictive immigration policy are weighing heavily on the economy and lifting inflation” [Eva Roytburg, “America’s Job Growth Has Flatlined—and Mark Zandi Believes June May Have Been the Start of a Recession,” Fortune, 2025.09.05].
Still waiting for the greatness….
These statistics are just facts and facts play no part in the MAGA reasoning cult of personality. Trump is good for the economy; it’s what MAGA believes that counts.