Donald Trump has just delivered the worst three months of employment growth from pandemic

Washington, President Donald Trump, who has enjoyed a reputation as a great businessman despite having bankruptcy, has supervised an economy that produced less than half of new jobs in his first six months than the predecessor Joe Biden in his last six months.

In fact, May, June and July may have been the worst three months of employment growth from the Coronavirus pandemic, according to federal data.

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

Apparently, Trump was so outraged by the numbers required by the dismissal of the employee responsible for the office that produces them, accusing it, without any evidence, of pretending the numbers in favor of Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, and against him.

“We need precise work numbers. I have ordered my team to shoot this designated politician Biden, immediately. It will be replaced by someone much more competent and qualified,” he wrote in a publication on social networks on Friday afternoon. “The economy is booming under ‘Trump’ despite a Fed that also plays games, this time with interest rates, where he lowered them twice, and substantially, just before the presidential elections, I suppose that in the hope of obtaining ‘Kamala’ chosen, how did that work? Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Julia DeMaree Nikhinson / News

Trump had affirmed during his career to recover his former job that Biden was a terrible administrator of the economy and that it would be much better. He campaigned aggressively for the high inflation that hit when the country emerged from global pandemic.

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

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

Before Trump fired the head of the Office of Labor Statistics, the The White House seemed to comfort himself in the fact that unemployment has not increased much and the growth of employment in recent months was still an employment growth instead of loss of employment.

“Inflation has cooled, wages have increased, unemployment is stable and the private sector is growing,” said White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, in a statement sent by email. “President Trump’s first agenda in the United States has assured that the new jobs go to US citizens, instead of illegal or workers born abroad.”

Trump’s characteristic economic policy of tariffs on imported goods has probably been a drag for the economy, braking both employment growth and a broader measure of economic activity known as Gross Domestic Product. Economists and business owners have said that tariffs will increase prices and slow hiring.

Trump blamed the president of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, for hurting the economy by refusing to reduce interest rates, which the Central Bank first rose during the Biden presidency to combat rampant inflation. Higher interest rates can cool inflation by decelerating commercial activity, leaving people and companies with less money to spend. Powell has maintained high rates because he fears that rates will boost inflation.

“Tariffs are raising billions of dollars to make our country rich again,” Leavitt said, referring to tariff income paid by US importers. “Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell needs to reduce rates so that our economy can continue with boom.”

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

The Office of Labor Statistics always reviews its monthly jobs numbers in each of the two months after a report is published for the first time. The agency pointed out in its press release that the reviews for May and June were “larger than normal”, but did not provide an explanation. Payroll numbers are based on reports from companies and governments, and reviews are the result of larger sample sizes after new data appears.

Dean Baker, the main economist of the Center for Economic Research and Policies, said there was no obvious reason for the unusual size of the reviews.

“It’s unfortunate because obviously our image of the economy changes greatly, but it happens,” Baker said. “The joke he was doing was that, in reality, it is a very intelligent way to distract people from the Epstein scandal.”