The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its much-anticipated employment report on Tuesday, sending a rude awakening to the job market after the 43-day government shutdown delayed data collection and publication of the report.
The Bureau reported that the U.S. economy lost 105,000 jobs in October and recouped about 64,000 jobs in November. The unemployment rate also rose to a four-year high of 4.6% last month—up from 4.4% in September and 4% at the beginning of the year—the highest since September 2021, when the nation was still bouncing back from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
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Economists also note that the report showed that wages are growing at the lowest rate in years. Although Americans’ earnings are still outpacing inflation, average hourly earnings grew at an annual rate of 3.5% in November, whereas inflation grew at a 3% rate in September, marking the slowest pace since 2021.
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Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial, said the report suggested an unequal economic outlook for the rich and the poor.
“The affluent are fine, if not thriving, while lower income households struggle with high rent payments, rising delinquencies, and job uncertainty,” he wrote.
The response from the stock market was mixed, albeit muted, on Tuesday morning following the release of the report, as investors seemed mostly unfazed: the tech-heavy Nasdaq rose slightly, while the S&P 500 slipped slightly and the Dow stayed mostly level.
As the Trump Administration has harped heavily on the affordability crisis facing Americans—and ran on the issue in 2024—Democrats have taken this report as a sign that Trump’s severe tariff policies, slimming of the federal government, and economic plan as a whole contributed to the grim outlook in the report.
“Donald Trump’s reckless policies have turned the job market into a living hell,” Democratic National Committee (DNC) Rapid Response Director Kendall Witmer said in a statement. “As working families grapple with sky-high prices — from groceries to holiday essentials — they’re also facing mass layoffs and rising unemployment, adding to an ever-growing list of worries about how to make ends meet in Trump’s economy.”
The DNC pointed to a recent report released last week from Groundwork Collaborative, The Century Foundation, and AFT that found that popular holiday gift prices rose an average of 26 percent since last year, nearly nine times the overall inflation rate.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer focused on November’s recuperation and on rising private-sector wages in her statement on Tuesday, brushing off October’s losses and slowing wage growth overall.
“November’s jobs report shows our economy continues to gain momentum despite the economic mess President Trump inherited from the Biden administration and the reckless Democrat shutdown,” she said. “With 64,000 jobs added in November, more and more Americans are coming off the sidelines and working in the private sector.”
“THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” the White House posted on social media, focusing on similar wins.
Here’s what else the report showed.
Manufacturing and young workers take a hit
Once again, the job reports show a decline in manufacturing jobs, with 5,000 roles lost in November and 9,000 in October. The White House has claimed that rejuvenation of the American manufacturing sector is a top priority of the Administration, and has used it as justification for an aggressive trade policy that shook up the stock market and foreign trade relationships for months earlier this year.
The BLS monthly numbers have yet to show a positive effect on hiring in the industry.
The unemployment rate for young people also took a hit, with the rate for 16-19-year-olds climbing to 16.3% in November from 13.2% in September, as those graduating high school are having a more difficult time finding jobs. The overall unemployment rate for 16-24-year-olds rose to 10.6%, the highest since 2021. Still, for those aged 20-to-24, the unemployment rate slid slightly to 8.3% in November, from 9.2% in September, though it is still higher than in 2021.
DOGE makes its mark
The decrease in jobs in October reflects the effects of the more than 150,000 federal employees who took the Trump Administration’s deferred buyouts as part of its effort to shrink the federal government’s workforce. Most of them were dropped from the federal payroll in September.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) helped the Trump Administration reduce the government payroll by 271,000 jobs since January, with most of those losses showing up in October.
“Federal employment has retreated to the lowest level in over a decade, completely reversing the previous administration’s federal hiring frenzy,” Secretary Chavez-DeRemer said in her statement, casting the shift as a positive completion of Trump’s vision.
Retail sales decline
The dim news for the job market comes at the same time as the Census Bureau released a report on Tuesday showing a deceleration in retail sales despite the upcoming holiday season, with sales remaining stagnant after a 0.1% increase in September.
This is the weakest monthly reading since May, and the rates differ significantly from 2024, when the average monthly retail sales growth was closer to 0.5%.
As consumer sentiment dipped to its lowest in three years in November amid the government shutdown, it could spell trouble for retail sales, which account for 70% of U.S. economic output.
Still, the data follows a National Retail Federation Thanksgiving weekend report, which said that a record 202.9 million consumers shopped during the five-day holiday weekend, up from 197 million in 2024.
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