So we’re getting over the shock of the worst monthly Jobs Report filed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the last 15 years (except the Covid months). July’s numbers were truly a gut punch to our job market but were no surprise to anyone who’s been objectively observing and who knew what to expect.
Yet some people are surprised, suspicious, or both: surprised that it wasn’t better, suspicious that it was a “rigged” report, designed to make the administration look bad. One of those people is Donald Trump, who should know better.
I’m a career coachand job market observer, at this for 28 years.
I certainly knew better, and here’s what I knew.
- On Trump’s first day in office, he started instigating what he threatened as long ago as his first term: “the deconstruction of the administrative state.” Now, it doesn’t take much to imagine what that means or what the scope of it could be. But with every onslaught carried out by Trump’s executioner Elon Musk, there were equal and opposite law suits and appeals, which only served too mess up the market and anyone’s ability to account for it. It drove the BLS crazy and the rest of us clueless.
- This has been percolating for months, ultimately revising May and June numbers from a total of 291,000 to 33,000. This infuriated the president, but it was clearly self-inflicted (DOGE).
- The job market is a complex system, with many subcutaneous factors. It’s much more than job creation numbers and unemployment rates. For instance, based on July’s numbers when the civilian noninstitutional population (working age adults) grows by 200,000, and the number of employed Americans shrinks by 260,000, that a sign if weakness and disharmony in the market. When the number of unemployed rises by 221,000 while the unemployment rate ticks up by only 0.1%, something’s brewing. And when unemployment rates vary wildly – White 3.7%, Asian 3.9%, Hispanic 5.0%, and African-American 7.2% – that kind of inequity always has a price to pay.
- And when 75% of all jobs created come from one employment sector (health care) and all of it from two (social assistance), that’s just plain lopsided.
Who solves problems?
No doubt this is trouble, but a real leader says “It’s not my fault but it is my problem” while less of a problem solver blames, suspects, and accuses. This is by no means over.