Trump can’t blame the latest employment numbers on the scorekeeper. From Ryan McMaken at mises.org:
Following the release of last month’s official federal jobs numbers, President Trump complained that the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was publishing inaccurate, too-low employment numbers to make Trump look bad. So, Trump fired the commissioner. Well, it looks like that didn’t fix “the problem”—as Trump saw it—because the latest employment numbers are even worse than last month’s numbers. Moreover, June’s total payroll number was revised down again in this week’s report, showing that the United States actually lost jobs in June.
June’s job losses—which now come in at -13,000—were then followed by a gain of an unimpressive 79,000 in July, with the new August total coming in at a paltry 22,000. Total job gains have now averaged a measly 29,000 for the past three months. This all suggests a rapidly weakening job market.
Some might point to the household survey—where total employed persons increased by 288,000 in August—as evidence of robust job growth. Unfortunately, the household survey also shows that the employment level is still below where it was in January of this year. That is, according to the household survey, there has been no employment growth at all in 2025, and is actually down by 500,000 employed persons over the past eight months. Over the past three months, job growth in the household survey has come in at an average of 40,000 per months. There’s simply not much good news here.
Another reason for concern is the fact that what job growth we have seen in the household survey has been due increasingly to part time employment. This is usually a sign of a weakening labor market. Specifically, for August, total full-time employment decreased by 357,000, compared to July. At the same time, part-time employment increased by 597,000. Over the past three months, full-time employment has fallen by an average of 360,000 jobs per month, while part-time has increased, on average, by 477,000.
Jobs are a construct of the white male patriarchy.
AI is printing up the UBI checks.
Yes we can!
Honk, honk.