The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday released a dismal jobs report for the month of August.
According to the report, the labor market added 22,000 jobs in August—a far cry from the 75,000 new jobs economists had forecast for the month. The unemployment rate rose slightly, to 4.3 percent, which is the highest it’s been since late 2021.
Revisions to prior months paint an even drearier picture, showing, for instance, that 13,000 jobs were actually lost in June (as opposed to the 14,000 gain in jobs initially reported). Before then, job numbers haven’t been in the negatives since December 2020, when Donald Trump was finishing his first term and the economy was still ravaged by the pandemic.
This is the first jobs report since Trump ousted the BLS chief and nominated MAGA partisan E.J. Antoni in her place due to a poor July report.
But even with the messenger having been shot, the message rings louder than ever. Jobs numbers thus far have been insulated from Trump’s meddling, as Antoni isn’t yet at the helm of the BLS, which is being overseen by its deputy commissioner, a BLS veteran.
Perhaps due to this fact, Trump on Thursday evening sought to downplay the importance of the August report.
At a gathering of tech executives at the White House, the president said, of the then-forthcoming numbers: “Well we’re going to have to see what the numbers—I don’t know, they come out tomorrow. But the real numbers that I’m talking about are going to be whatever it is, but will be in a year from now when these monstrous, huge, beautiful places—they’re palaces of genius. And when they start opening up, I think you’ll see job numbers that are going to be absolutely incredible.”
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