There Are More Unemployed People than Jobs Available in Trump’s America

By Jacob Weindling | September 4, 2025 | 8:50am

Photo by The White House

Economy Jobs

There Are More Unemployed People than Jobs Available in Trump’s America

Jobs data is always a little difficult to parse, in large part because there are always revisions to it. Not because some Biden official is supposedly trying to cook the books to make Trump look bad, but because smaller firms tend to report later than larger firms do, and so the initial jobs report is never the final figure. If jobs reports are consistently revised downward like they have been all year, then that likely means that smaller firms are struggling to hire people. Another reason it’s difficult to look at one jobs report and come to any conclusion is the seasonality inherent in the labor cycle, with summer jobs for younger folks being one example of how certain times of year, jobs will naturally grow or wane. Not to mention that employment is a lagging economic indicator, and it’s difficult to assess exactly what is going on in the labor market without understanding the broader economy first.

But we have stacked quite a few bad jobs reports together in the last few months, and the largest tariff regime since 1934 is pretty good supplemental information providing a compelling reason why hiring has slowed down, and we have two new reports to add to a pile that now is pretty conclusive: the labor market is very weak, it’s getting weaker every month than it was the previous one, and America now has more unemployed people than job openings.

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The Federal Reserve published their Beige Book yesterday, a report from the twelve Fed districts, and it revealed a pretty shocking level of economic weakness. “Eleven Districts described little or no net change in overall employment levels, while one District described a modest decline,” wrote the Fed. “Seven Districts noted that firms were hesitant to hire workers because of weaker demand or uncertainty.”

The ADP private jobs report was also released today, with hiring rising less in August than expected. Just 54,000 new private jobs were created last month, below the 75,000 expected and well below the revised total of 106,000 in the previous month. “The year started with strong job growth, but that momentum has been whipsawed by uncertainty,” said Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist, in a press release.

It’s very simple to understand what is going on if you are not a Trump cultist. His racist deportation regime is depleting America’s labor force, as documented in the last Dallas Fed Survey. Trump dramatically raised taxes on every American to such a degree that it took 35 percent of General Motors’ second quarter net income, and every week we seemingly get new tariff rates while he promises at some point in the future that they may be lower on the countries currently angering him. If you are a firm who does business in India, it’s a far better option to tighten your belt and wait and see if this madness will abate than to pay a 50 percent tariff that may be gone tomorrow and fundamentally realign your business around the whims of a man who proves he doesn’t understand anything about how businesses work. This has led to a world where folks aren’t exactly getting laid off in droves, but there is absolutely a hiring freeze of sorts going on right now, all due to president deals’ uncertainty.

Tomorrow will mark the first Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report since Trump fired the head of the BLS and replaced her with a wildly unqualified January 6th participant. It used to be that the ADP report was the one worth doubting, they are not and never have been a gold standard labor market metric, but now there’s every reason in the world to question whatever numbers come out of Trump’s BLS. It’s very hard to cook the BLS books, in large part because they’re informed by reports filed by businesses, not compiled by the BLS itself, but Trump’s desire to cook the books is clearly there. So if a jobs number comes out tomorrow that doesn’t match the very clear multi-month downtrend painted by previous BLS jobs reports, the Fed’s Beige Book, and numerous weak ADP private job reports, you can be certain that the BLS has been compromised, and any good numbers from them are simply an attempt to hide the ugly truth about Trump’s economy that gets closer and closer to stagflation every day.