Trump’s demolition of the American job market continues. Last week’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a stunning loss of 23,000 jobs in July:
If there’s one thing an economy’s supposed to do, it’s add jobs. At least enough to absorb folks joining and re-joining the workforce — from school, raising kids, and (at least in former times) immigration.
So a -23,000 month, like the U.S. economy had in July, is definitely going in the wrong direction. In fact, over the past three months, with those big downward revisions, job creation has averaged just 20,000 a month, which is pretty anemic.
Diving deeper into these signs of mediocrity, July saw job losses in several sectors: local government down 57,000, leisure and hospitality down 40,000, finance down 14,000, retail down more than 19,000.
The sector that lost the most jobs in July was local government education. That category is mostly K-12 public school roles, which were down almost 50,000 [Mitchell Hartman, “Here’s Where the Economy Lost Jobs in July,” Marketplace, 2026.08.07].
Trumpflation fouled the jobs boost we should have gotten from the World Cup:
Nationwide Chief Economist Kathy Bostjancic… pointed to another sector that lost jobs in both June and July: leisure and hospitality.
“The surprising part there is that it happened during the World Cup, right? Ticket sales were strong, attendance, tourism,” she said.
Andrew Flowers at recruitment technology firm Appcast said he sees one reason that both leisure and hospitality, and retail shed jobs in July: “Those are very consumer-facing industries. Inflation is now outpacing wage gains, so households are starting to pull back on spending” [Hartman, 2026.08.07].
Friday’s report revised the much-vaunted May and June jobs tallies down sharply:
Figures for May were revised to 63,000 jobs added, down from an initially reported 129,000 jobs, while figures for June dropped 37,000, to 20,000 jobs added. In total, job figures for May and June were revised down 103,000 jobs [Michael Sainato and Gaya Gupta, “US Unexpectedly Lost 23,000 Jobs in July as Slump in Growth Continues,” The Guardian, 2026.08.07].
Also sandbagging the job market: Trump’s anti-immigration mania:
With immigration having largely been stopped — and possibly now a net negative — the labor force is growing very slowly. At the moment, there is little danger that job growth will fall below the breakeven pace needed to keep the unemployment rate from rising. However, slower wage growth, even in the face of rising inflation, indicates it is not a very good labor market for most workers. That story does not seem likely to change any time soon [Dean Baker, “July 2026 Jobs Preview: What to Expect,” Center for Economic and Policy Research: Data Bytes, 2026.08.05].
Inflation rising, wage growth slowing, workforce stagnating—that’s Trumponomics!
Feeling great again yet?
During my entire lifetime job creation has been done under Democratic presidents. Reagan was the exception but he had a Democratic congress so they kept him from screwing up, thanks to Tip. The idea that Republicans are good on the economy is a con they have perpetuated forever.
Education jobs are down because of a declining birth rate, which is being noted world-wide, not just in the USA. Without babies, school enrollments are going to drop. That’s just how it works. The American birthrate started its present decline in 2007, 10 years before Trump entered the White House.
Another phenomenon driving the loss of jobs in the education sector is the rise in homeschooling.
When schools closed during the covid pandemic, parents were forced to home school their kids, and many decided to continue. Dissatisfied with what public education was offering, concerns about safety, and the availability of on-line classes and support have made home-schooling easier than ever, just like working from home. At the same time that parents found out their kids could be educated at home, many adults found out they no longer needed to go into an office to do their jobs. If they are no longer commuting or traveling for work, they aren’t going to dine out or stay in motels. That hits the hospitality industry. While staying home began in 2020 while Trump was still in office, once the pandemic ended and Biden was in office, people continued to stay home.
Same thing for retail sales. Covid made shopping in brick and mortar stores feel risky. What began as temporary measures: on-line ordering, with curbside pick-up, delivery and shipping options, became so popular that many retailers continued them. This actually provided retailers with better inventory control and reduced their staffing needs. Floor sales associates are no longer necessary because many customers are not coming inside, they are being replaced by warehouse pickers. Cashiers have been replaced by barcodes and scanners.
Big box stores and warehouse grocery stores started it, Price Club was started in 1976, both Sam’s Club and Costco were started in 1983. Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1995. Walmart launched “scan and go” in Sam’s Clubs in 2016; you don’t need a sales associate, you don’t need a cashier, you don’t even need a cash register, you just use your phone to scan barcodes.
These are all social changes: fewer children, staying home, buying and selling electronically.
Given that buying and selling electronically (in ancient numerology systems, W has a numeric value of 6, so www = 666) was predicted in the First Century, around 95 CE, in the Book of Revelation, people who are surprised by changes in retail marketing are rather late to the party. Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web in 1989. Being a numbers guy, he probably knew www = 666. Cute.
As for population decline, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968 and told us all we were headed for mass starvation and the collapse of civilization if we didn’t stop breeding like rabbits, so the declining birth rate should not have been a surprise, either. Climate change alarmism really got the message out: we’re all gonna die!!
What’s ridiculous is blaming Trump for things that were predicted almost 2000 years ago, and set in motion by events in 1968, 1976, 1983, 1989, and 1995.