Trump's job market promises fall flat as hiring collapses and inflation
ticks up
[September 06, 2025] By
JOSH BOAK
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. job market has gone from healthy to lethargic
during President Donald Trump’s first seven months back in the White
House, as hiring has collapsed and inflation has started to climb once
again as his tariffs take hold.
Friday's jobs report showed employers added a mere 22,000 jobs in
August, as the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%. Factories and
construction firms shed workers. Revisions showed the economy lost
13,000 jobs in June, the first monthly losses since December 2020,
during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new data exposed the widening gap between the booming economy Trump
promised and the more anemic reality of what he’s managed to deliver so
far. The White House prides itself on operating at a breakneck speed,
but it’s now asking the American people for patience, with Trump saying
better job numbers might be a year away.
“We’re going to win like you’ve never seen,” Trump said Friday. “Wait
until these factories start to open up that are being built all over the
country, you’re going to see things happen in this country that nobody
expects.”
The plea for patience has done little to comfort Americans, as economic
issues that had been a strength for Trump for a decade have evolved into
a persistent weakness. Approval of Trump’s economic leadership hit 56%
in early 2020 during his first term, but that figure was 38% in July of
this year, according to polling by The Associated Press-NORC Center for
Public Affairs Research.
The situation has left Trump searching for others to blame, while
Democrats say the problem begins and ends with him.
Trump maintained Friday that the economy would be adding jobs if Federal
Reserve Chair Jerome Powell had slashed benchmark interest rates, even
though doing so to the degree that Trump wants could ignite higher
inflation. Investors expect a rate cut by the Fed at its next meeting in
September, although that’s partially because of weakening job numbers.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Trump’s tariffs and
freewheeling policies were breaking the economy and the jobs report
proved it.
“This is a blaring red light warning to the entire country that Donald
Trump is squeezing the life out of our economy,” Schumer said.
By many measures, Trump has dug himself into a hole on the economy as
its performance has yet to come anywhere close to his hype.
— Trump in 2024 suggested that deporting immigrants in the country
illegally would protect “Black jobs.” But the Black unemployment rate
has climbed to 7.5%, the highest since October 2021, as the Trump
administration has engaged in aggressive crackdowns on immigration.
— At his April tariffs announcement, Trump said, “Jobs and factories
will come roaring back into our country and you see it happening
already.” Since April, manufacturers have cut 42,000 jobs and builders
have downsized by 8,000.
— Trump said in his inaugural address that the “liquid gold” of oil
would make the nation wealthy as he pivoted the economy to fossil fuels.
But the logging and mining sectors — which includes oil and natural gas
— have shed 12,000 jobs since January. While gasoline prices are lower,
the Energy Information Administration in August estimated that crude oil
production, the source of the wealth promised by Trump, would fall next
year by an average of 100,000 barrels a day.
— At 2024 rallies, Trump promised to “end” inflation on “day one” and
halve electricity prices within 12 months. Consumer prices have climbed
from a 2.3% annual increase in April to 2.7% in July. Electricity costs
are up 4.6% so far this year.
The Trump White House maintains that the economy is on the cusp of
breakout growth, with its new import taxes poised to raise hundreds of
billions of dollars annually if they can withstand court challenges.
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President Donald Trump speaks at a dinner in the Rose Garden of the
White House, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex
Brandon)
 At a Thursday night dinner with
executives and founders from companies including Apple, Google,
Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta, Trump said the facilities being built to
develop artificial intelligence would deliver “jobs numbers like our
country has never seen before” at some point “a year from now.”
But Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the
American Enterprise Institute, noted that Trump’s promise that
strong job growth is ahead contradicts his unsubstantiated claims
that recent jobs data was faked to embarrass him. That accusation
prompted him to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics last
month after the massive downward revisions in the July jobs report.
Strain said it’s rational for the administration to say better times
are coming, but doing so seems to undermine Trump’s allegations that
the numbers are rigged.
“The president clearly stated that the data were not trustworthy and
that the weakness in the data was the product of anti-Trump
manipulation,” Strain said. “And if that’s true, what are we being
patient about?”
The White House maintained that Friday's jobs report was an outlier
in an otherwise good economy.
Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic
Council, said the Atlanta Federal Reserve is expecting annualized
growth of 3% this quarter, which he said would be more consistent
with monthly job gains of 100,000.
Hassett said inflation is low, income growth is “solid” and new
investments in assets such as buildings and equipment will
ultimately boost hiring.
But Daniel Hornung, who was deputy director of the National Economic
Council in the Biden White House, said he didn’t see evidence of a
coming rebound in the August jobs data.
“Pretty broad based weakening,” Hornung said. “The decline over
three months in goods producing sectors like construction and
manufacturing is particularly notable. There were already headwinds
there and tariffs are likely exacerbating challenges.”
Stephen Moore, an economics fellow at the conservative Heritage
Foundation and supporter of the president, said the labor market is
“definitely softening,” even as he echoed Trump’s claims that the
jobs numbers are not reliable.
He said the economy was adjusting to the Trumpian shift of higher
tariffs and immigration reductions that could lower the pool of
available workers.
“The problem going forward is a shortage or workers, not a shortage
of jobs,” Moore said. “In some ways, that’s a good problem to have.”
But political consultant and pollster Frank Luntz took the
contrarian view that the jobs report won’t ultimately matter for the
political fortunes of Trump and his movement because voters care
more about inflation and affordability.
“That’s what the public is watching, that’s what the public cares
about,” Luntz said. “Everyone who wants a job has a job, for the
most part.”
From the perspective of elections, Trump still has roughly a year to
demonstrate progress on improving affordability, Luntz said. Voters
will generally lock in their opinions about the economy by Labor Day
before the midterm elections next year.
In other words, Trump still has time.
“It’s still up for grabs,” he said. “The deciding point will come
Labor Day of 2026.”
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