Donald Trump Just Delivered The Worst Three Months Of Job Growth Since The Pandemic

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump, who has enjoyed a reputation as a great businessman despite having bankrupted casinos, has overseen an economy that produced fewer than half as many new jobs in his first six months as predecessor Joe Biden did in his final six months.

In fact, May, June and July may have been the worst three months of job growth since the coronavirus pandemic, federal data shows.

Between February and July, the U.S. economy in Trump’s second term added 486,000 jobs compared to the 1.05 million created from August 2024 through January, according to a HuffPost analysis of data from the Labor Department. That comes out to an average of 175,000 jobs per month under Biden and just 81,000 under Trump.

Trump was apparently so incensed by the numbers that he is demanding the firing of the employee responsible for the office that produces them, accusing her, without any evidence, of faking the numbers in favor of Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, and against him.

“We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified,” he wrote in a social media post Friday afternoon. “The Economy is BOOMING under ‘TRUMP’ despite a Fed that also plays games, this time with Interest Rates, where they lowered them twice, and substantially, just before the Presidential Election, I assume in the hopes of getting ‘Kamala’ elected – How did that work out? Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should also be put ‘out to pasture.’ Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Trump had claimed during his run to regain his old job that Biden was a terrible steward of the economy and that he would be far better. He campaigned aggressively over the high inflation that struck as the country emerged from the global pandemic.

But even on that front, Trump has not been able to deliver. Inflation had been trending downward for more than a year even during the 2024 campaign, and Biden’s final six months had seen an average inflation rate of 2.7%. During the first five months under Trump — the comparable figure for July is not yet available — inflation has averaged 2.5%, although it has been trending higher because of the tariffs he has imposed as part of his trade war.

The unemployment rate, which is based on a different survey than the jobs report, rose a tenth of a percentage point from June to July, to 4.2% — the same rate as in July of last year.

Before Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the White House seemed to take solace in the fact that unemployment hasn’t risen much and job growth over the past several months was still job growth rather than job losses. 

“Inflation has cooled, wages have increased, unemployment is stable, and the private sector is growing,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement. “President Trump’s America First agenda has ensured new jobs go to American citizens, instead of illegals or foreign-born workers.” 

Trump’s signature economic policy of tariffs on imported goods likely has been a drag on the economy, slowing both job growth and a broader measure of economic activity known as gross domestic product. Economists and business owners alike have said the tariffs will increase prices and slow hiring.

Trump has blamed Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell for hurting the economy by refusing to cut interest rates, which the central bank first hiked during Biden’s presidency in order to fight rampant inflation. Higher interest rates can cool inflation by slowing business activity, leaving people and businesses with less money to spend. Powell has kept rates elevated because he fears the tariffs will boost inflation. 

“The tariffs are raking in billions of dollars to make our country wealthy again,” Leavitt said, referring to tariff revenue paid by U.S. importers. “Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell needs to cut rates so our economy can continue to boom.” 

Friday’s jobs report showed that the economy added a lower-than-expected 73,000 jobs in April, but the worst part of the report was its revisions to the preliminary numbers from May and June, which together declined by 258,000 jobs. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics always revises its monthly jobs numbers in each of the two months after a report is first published. The agency noted in its press release that the revisions for May and June were “larger than normal,” but it didn’t provide an explanation. The payroll numbers are based on reports from businesses and governments, and the revisions result from larger sample sizes after new data comes in.

Dean Baker, senior economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said there was no obvious reason for the unusual size of the revisions. 

“It’s unfortunate because it obviously hugely changes our picture of the economy, but it does happen,” Baker said. “The joke I was making was that, actually, it’s a very clever way to distract people from the Epstein scandal.”