Trump’s economic engine is sputtering, exposing catastrophic failure of MAGA agenda

President Donald Trump wrecked the economy during his first time in the White House, when unemployment reached levels not seen since the Great Depression, and now he is following up with more chaos, crisis, and corruption that are causing the U.S. economy to sputter out.

The U.S. labor market created a paltry 22,000 jobs in August and actually shrank earlier in the summer—a first since the darkest days of the pandemic—according to a damning report Friday from the Labor Department.

The unemployment rate inched up to 4.3%, the highest level since October 2021, signaling that the foundation of the American economy is cracking under the weight of the Trump administration’s reckless policies.

This dismal news confirms that the so-called “Trump Boom” is a bust for working families.

The report caps four consecutive months of anemic job growth, with the average monthly gain from May to August collapsing by 75% compared to the same period a year ago.

Revised figures reveal the situation is even worse than previously known, showing a net loss of 13,000 jobs in June, the first negative reading since the pandemic-era disaster of December 2020.

“At this point, the job market is at stall speed,” said former Federal Reserve economist Claudia Sahm, who is now at New Century Advisors. “It’s hanging out in a place of very, very slow growth, and that makes the economy vulnerable to a recession.”

The weakness was visible across the economy, with net losses in manufacturing, construction, and oil drilling—all industries Trump claims to be promoting.

A meager increase in health care jobs was nearly wiped out by continued, ideologically-driven cuts to the federal workforce, which has shed 97,000 jobs since January.

The labor movement issued a scathing indictment of the administration. AFL-CIO spokesperson Mia Jacobs stated, “The labor movement has been warning that the Trump administration’s policies are bad for working families. Today’s jobs report shows those policies continue to weigh down the job market… Were it not for health care, there would be overall negative growth since June.”

Jacobs highlighted the alarming rise in Black unemployment to 7.5%, a rate not seen since the pandemic, calling it an “ominous sign” for the entire economy.

She directly tied the suffering to Trump’s agenda, noting the administration is “actively firing more workers by stopping work on key infrastructure projects” and has passed laws that will “rip away health care from 17 million people and cut more than half a million care jobs.”

The report exposes the catastrophic failure of Trump’s agenda: tax cuts for the super-wealthy funded by reductions to food and medical programs for the poor, trade tariffs that drive up prices for consumers and cripple industries, and a climate of chaotic governance that leaves businesses paralyzed and unable to plan for the future.

The declining political clout of the working class and the concomitant degradation of American living standards impact all of us.

In a move straight out of an authoritarian playbook, Trump responded to last month’s similarly grim data not with policy, but with purges, abruptly firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and accusing her without evidence of doctoring the numbers.

In recent decades, U.S. economic growth has not been broadly shared, as stock market prices climb toward new peaks, but millions of Americans fall between the cracks in what is being called a second ‘Gilded Age.’

As the evidence of his economic failure mounts, Trump took to social media to deflect blame, lambasting Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for high interest rates that his own trade and immigration policies have made necessary. Investors, initially hopeful for a Fed rate cut later this month, soured as the day wore on, grappling with the terrifying new reality that the American jobs engine is shutting down.

For millions of Americans, the statistics are a painful reality. “It feels like I was lied to as a child when they said if you got a degree, you’d probably have a job,” said Leah Bailey, 26, a college graduate who has applied to 200 jobs without success.