Trump’s Tariffs/Tax Agenda Kills Job Growth. Lowest Since Great Recession of 2009

Aug 1, 2025 07:10 PM EDT, Fri

U.S. job growth turns cold as Trump’s agenda takes its toll on the economy

The question for the White House is simple: “If Trump has created a ‘hot’ economy, why has American job growth slowed to a 16-year low?”

Aug. 1, 2025, 9:34 AM EDT By Steve Benen

Expectations heading into this week showed projections of about 100,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in July. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the totals fell short of those expectations. CNBC News reported:

Nonfarm payroll growth was slower than expected in July and the unemployment rate ticked higher, raising potential trouble signs for the U.S. labor market. Job growth totaled 73,000 for the month, above the June total of 14,000 but below even the meager Dow Jones estimate for a gain of 100,000.

While the data from July was discouraging, far more important were the drastic revisions from May and June — which were down by a combined 258,000 jobs, compared with earlier, preliminary reporting.

Indeed, according to the revisions, the U.S. economy created just 33,000 jobs combined over May and June, which is a woeful total for an economy that Donald Trump and his Republican cohorts have incessantly described as “hot” in recent weeks.

Over the first seven months of 2025, the latest data suggests the economy has added 597,000 jobs. That might sound like a decent number, but over the first seven months of 2024 — when Trump said the economy was terrible — the total was over 1 million jobs, and over the first seven months of 2023, the U.S. economy added nearly 1.7 million jobs.

In fact, if we exclude 2020, when the pandemic wreaked havoc on the economy, the first seven months of this year show the slowest job growth in the United States since 2009, when the economy was still hemorrhaging jobs from the Great Recession.

When trying to boast about the economy, the White House routinely references what it calls the “Trump Effect.” The latest job data, coupled with sluggish growth and stubborn inflation, suggests this “effect” isn’t working.

Indeed, the question the president and his team ought to face is simple: “If Trump has created a ‘hot’ economy, why has American job growth slowed to a 16-year low?”

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

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