To hear Donald Trump tell the story, you would think the United States economy is booming. He’s variously claimed his administration has resulted in “the greatest economy in the history of our country,” or, even, “in the history of the world.”
It wasn’t true before he started his unnecessary – and illegal – war with Iran, and it’s even less true now.
Yes, the April jobs report released Friday showed that the U.S. added 178,000 jobs last month, well above expectations. But over the last six months, job growth has averaged just 89,000 per month – weak sauce by any measure. As usual during Trump 2.0, the health care industry led the way with 76,000 jobs added (thanks in part to the resolution of a strike at Kaiser Permanente). Other industries lagged: while manufacturing employment grew 12,000, there are still 82,000 fewer such jobs than when Trump returned to the White House, And a large part of the reason the overall unemployment rate fell to 4.3% is because 400,000 people exited the workforce entirely.
Overall, the job market is all but frozen, with little in the way of hiring or turnover. And for recent college graduates, it’s even worse, which might help explain Trump’s faltering support among this cohort. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, more than 40 percent of college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27 hold jobs that typically don’t require a college degree. That high a share is usually seen only during economic downturns and their immediate aftermath, and is comparable to rates seen in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
While Trump’s largely incoherent tariff policy has not only failed to restore American manufacturing, it has increased costs for Americans on everything from food to construction equipment. Adding insult to injury: there is some evidence, according to the progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative, big corporations are taking advantage of all the confusion to impose inflationary price hikes in order to boost their own profits.
At the same time, thanks to the war, gas prices are on the rise – and then some. The price per gallon crossed the $4 mark nationally this week, and is still rising. In California – which is dependent on special formulations to meet air quality standards – a gallon of gas costs nearly $6, and more than that amount in Los Angeles.
Economists are increasingly predicting stagflation – a period of low growth and high inflation – for the U.S. No surprise, consumer sentiment is all but in the toilet, with the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey at near-record lows and huge numbers of Americans say they believe the country is heading in the wrong direction.
The president’s response to all of this is a mix of denial, flim-flam man, and telling Americans to stuff it. He’s fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a poor jobs report. He claims that “the economy Is roaring back” even as those around him still say they need more time to fix the economy. And at other times, he says worries about affordability are a “fake narrative” and a “con job.”
At the same time, the extreme corruption of the Trump administration is also giving companies a license to raise prices and otherwise treat their customers like chumps without a choice. The gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has left Americans with nowhere to turn when a credit card issuer or bank does them wrong. The de facto refusal to enforce antitrust statutes will almost certainly raise costs for Americans as well.
As I’ve pointed out before, Trump’s economy in many ways resembles to a multi-level marketing scheme. The only people making out here are the wealthiest of the wealthy, who are benefitting from tax cuts, while Trump performs his lifelong serial con bait and switch on the rest of us. This month’s job numbers are almost certainly offering more of the same – they look good on first glance, but dig beneath the surface, and the rot quickly becomes apparent.
Helaine Olen
Helaine R. Olen is the author of "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry" and a co-author of "The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated." She has been a columnist for The Washington Post and Slate, and her work has appeared in numerous other publications, including The New York Times and The Atlantic. She is managing editor of the American Economic Liberties Project.