President Donald Trump promised an economic boom, a country brimming with factories, investment, and jobs. Instead, the American hiring machine has slowed to a crawl, and in July it slipped into reverse.
The United States lost 23,000 payroll jobs last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), following an average monthly gain of only 34,000 over the previous year. May and June looked worse after BLS finished revising them, too, as 103,000 jobs were removed from the earlier estimates.
“The numbers expose the bitter truth,” one social media user, arguing that Republicans have been far better at piling up debt and deficits than producing jobs.
That anger has helped send a presidential jobs graphic flying across Facebook, Instagram and Threads. It shows Bill Clinton first with 22.9 million net payroll jobs, then Joe Biden at 16.6 million, Ronald Reagan at 16.1 million and Barack Obama at 11.6 million. Trump sits dead last, the only president on the graphic below zero, with his two terms combined at minus 1.7 million.
BLS does not produce that presidential ranking; however, some did note that Trump’s first term coincided with COVID-19, when more than 20 million jobs disappeared in April 2020 alone. Biden then inherited the recovery, with enormous payroll gains as businesses reopened and workers returned to the force.
But Trump’s second administration now has its own record, and it is increasingly difficult to dress it up as a jobs boom.
July’s losses cut deeply into everyday American employment. Leisure and hospitality shed 40,000 jobs;, government lost 53,000; , retail shed 19,400;, and financial activities lost 14,000. Construction added 22,000, and health and education services gained 25,000, helping prevent an even larger overall decline.
“Dems combined have created more jobs than the GOP combined, which means Dems are better at job creation!” another social media commenter wrote. “And not to mention Donald Trump is the only president to lose jobs in office!”
The political sting comes from Trump’s own sales pitch. He has spent years using jobs as a scoreboard, boasting about hiring, factories, and investment as evidence of his economic stewardship. His second administration now presides over a labor market in which 5.9 million people outside the workforce say they want a job, including 476,000 discouraged workers who believe no jobs are available to them.
The unemployment rate remains at 4.1%, hardly a picture of economic collapse. Private employers added 30,000 jobs in July, while government losses pulled the overall payroll figure below zero. Those numbers matter because they keep the story from becoming something the data do not support.
“THE NUMBERS DON’T LIE,” independent journalist Christina Lorey wrote on Instagram Aug. 22. “According to Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll data, Trump is the ONLY president to leave office with fewer jobs than when he started. Yes, COVID matters. Absolutely….Biden inherited that same pandemic-damaged economy and presided over a massive employment recovery.”
Voters appear increasingly unhappy with what they are seeing. Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 33%, the lowest of his presidency, according to an August Reuters/Ipsos poll. More registered voters now say Democrats have the better approach to the economy than Republicans, 37% to 36%, marking the first Democratic advantage on that question in roughly a decade.
The next BLS report is scheduled to be released on Sept. 4, offering another look at whether employers have begun hiring again or whether America’s long-running jobs expansion is losing strength.
For Trump, who built an economic brand around winning bigger than anyone before him, the social-media verdict has been considerably less forgiving.
“Let’s just say, he is sinking the USA,” wrote one commenter.
