The last time America’s job numbers were this bad—besides the pandemic—was during the Great Recession.
Revisions to the last three months of job reports have moved the three-month growth average to 35,000, a lag that hasn’t emerged since 2010, and which some economists have said could indicate a recession is on the horizon.
“The labor market is much weaker than originally reported the last two months. While payrolls grew 73k in July, May and June data were revised down a total of 258k to 19k and 14k, respectively,” wrote Economic Policy Institute economist Elise Gould.
The health care and social assistance industries supplied practically all the new jobs over the last three months, while other sectors—including manufacturing, professional and business services, warehouse, retail, and government—lost jobs, according to the new figures.
“Without health care, the last three months of payroll gains look like this: -53,000 in May, -45,000 in June, and -300 in July,” reported Bloomberg U.S. economy editor Matthew Boesler.
EPI chief economist Josh Bivens posited that if the U.S. enters a recession in the coming months, the “rapid softening/deterioration in the labor market” over the last three months will likely be marked in retrospect as the start of the country’s economic decline.
Trump administration officials blamed the abysmal numbers on “seasonal adjustment quirks,” though they failed to provide rationale on what made this season so different. In light of that, economists had their own ideas, pointing directly at Donald Trump’s trade policies.
“I’ve been calling this a ‘Frozen’ job market for awhile. Now I would call it a red flag,” wrote Navy Federal chief economist Heather Long. “Companies do not want to hire or invest with this much uncertainty about tariffs, inflation, etc.”
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