Labor Day Lies

Trump's claims about jobs and the economy are as phony as his new hair color

Just in time for Labor Day, the August 2026 jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) gave Trump everything he needed to make the kind of mythomaniacal claims about the U.S. economy for which he is famous.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, the mainstream media continue to serve primarily as stenographers for Trump's endless stream of lies.

As the nation headed into a three-day weekend, if people heard anything at all about the latest jobs report all that likely registered was the instant take that it "blew past expectations."

That may not jibe with what most Americans are experiencing as they grapple with the highest-ever Labor Day gas prices, as truckers shell out all-time record high prices for diesel, and as more than a million able-bodied workers ponder their next move after dropping out entirely from the weak and discouraging job market.

But with cable news airing re-runs, Trump and the White House seized the opportunity to clog people's social feeds with a distorted take on the current job market.

Last year, Trump told us the jobs numbers were "rigged." This year, he's pretending they show a historic boom

While cherry-picking statistics is not a new tactic in the world of politics, the legendary snake-oil salesman Trump has taken the practice to a whole new level.

In August 2025, Trump fired BLS director Erika McEntarfer, claiming that a series of abysmal jobs reports caused by the desperate failure of his policies meant the reports were "RIGGED." (A study by Cornell later showed that, by making people question the credibility of government data, Trump's political act caused a $20 billion loss in industrial production.)

Since then, Trump continues to highlight random data points to make unsupported claims about the overall reality.

In July 2026, he said repeatedly that inflation was "way down." Then, following a temporary dip in energy prices, he claimed overall inflation was "dropping at the fastest rate in more than six years." In reality, even at that time, inflation was still higher than it was when he returned to office in January 2025.

For most of his second term, Trump has leaned heavily into the No-Shit-Sherlock claim that "there are more people working today than at any time in the history of our country." Because this "fact" is primarily the result of population growth, it is a consistent reality under almost every American president in months when the U.S. economy is expanding, which is why FactCheck.org describes it as a "hollow statistic."

A more meaningful statistic is, of course, the Labor Participation Rate, which peaked at 67.3% in January 2000 under Bill Clinton.

It stands at just 61.6% today.

During Trump's first term, the Labor Participation Rate plunged to 60.1% in April 2020. It recovered slightly to 61.4% by the time Trump grudgingly left office in January 2021.

Under Biden it rebounded further, standing at 62.6% by the time Trump returned to office in January 2025.

During Trump's second term, the Labor Participation Rate has plunged again, retesting the January 2021 level of 61.4% this July, before bouncing slightly to 61.6% in August.

The Trump White House is spending Labor Day Weekend polishing a turd

Anyone gullible enough to believe Trump's "Truths" or the White House's official social media posts this weekend would be convinced that an "explosive" August jobs report proves that we're in the midst of a jobs "BOOM" and a dramatic manufacturing resurgence.

One example: Using data from a survey of the Third Federal Reserve District ("the Philly Fed survey"), which covers only eastern and central Pennsylvania, the nine southern counties of New Jersey, and Delaware, the White House is claiming falsely that "American Factories Show Strongest Current Conditions in 5+ Years."

In reality, the Philly Fed data is based on a highly limited geographical survey that excludes major manufacturing sectors that are located mainly in the Midwest (e.g. automotive, machinery, metals and metal products), the South (e.g. automotive, aerospace, textiles) and the West Coast (e.g. technology, electronics, aerospace, defense).

What the latest survey actually showed was the biggest local uptick in mood in five years, even as the national conditions remain worse than they were when Biden left office.

A local vibe shift doesn't equate to a 5-year national high in "current conditions"

When it comes to current conditions, even the regional report the White House is quoting shows that "the current new orders and shipments indexes both declined" in August. The new orders index dropped 7 points and the shipments index was down by 6.

The most recent national data — the Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) report from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) released on September 1 — also showed that current conditions deteriorated in August, as the headline PMI fell one percentage point and the New Orders Index fell three points, from 56.7 in July to 53.7.

While it's true that some of the manufacturing jobs lost in 2025 have been brought back in recent months, Trump's tariffs policies have still left us with a net loss of 55,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs since January 2025.

Trump's claims of a "manufacturing resurgence" are greatly exaggerated.

And it doesn't stop there.

The White House actually tweeted that the embarrassingly low total of "ONE MILLION NEW JOBS IN JUST 19 MONTHS" somehow signified that "President Trump has entirely revitalized private sector jobs in America."

It's hard to imagine any previous administration bragging about creating an average of just 53,000 TOTAL jobs per month. (Biden created an average of 335,000 new jobs per month — one million new jobs every 3 months — over the course of his 4-year term.)

But Trump is bragging about only a subset of total jobs.

When you factor in the decline in government jobs since he returned to office, Trump has created fewer than 900,000 total jobs — an average of 47,000 per month — over the past 19 months.

Trump's second-term job performance is historically lousy — even compared to other GOP presidents

Since Trump returned to office, he's given us the slowest stretch of non-pandemic, non-financial crisis job creation in recent history.

So far in his second term, Trump's incredibly weak and incredibly feeble jobs performance puts him behind every president since Reagan except for his fellow warmonger and market crasher George W. Bush.

The only other president he's (so far) outperforming is his own stupid self the last time he held office.

The August jobs report highlighted another sign of weakness: It "was decisively tilted towards lower-wage jobs"

As most mainstream media led with the fact that the August 2026 jobs report "beat expectations," Jared Blikre dug a little deeper at Yahoo Finance to explain why the report was "less impressive than it looks."

As Blikre explains:

Restaurants and bars added 59,000 jobs, while local government education added 42,000. Together, that's 62% of the entire August gain. That leaves 61,000 for the rest of the economy.

But both of those big gains come with an asterisk.

Restaurants and bars had averaged only 12,000 new jobs a month over the prior year. The education gain largely reversed a drop in July.

He also highlights what RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas told Yahoo Finance last Friday morning: "The composition of the report was decisively tilted towards lower-wage jobs."

Women accounted for 98% of all job gains in August

One of the most surprising statistics in the August 2026 jobs report is the fact that 98% of all net new jobs went to women, with men representing only 4,000 of the net positions added.

CNBC spoke to Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab, about what that data point signifies:

Because women tend to earn less than men, Ullrich said winning a higher share of jobs could mean companies are focusing hiring on lower-wage roles. Given that women are more likely to have multiple jobs, Ullrich said some of the gains could stem from workers who are stretching themselves thin.

"You could look at it and say, 'Yay, women,'" Ullrich said. But, "I don’t think it’s necessarily a positive story for women overall."

Meanwhile, for men trying to compete in the Trump economy, the bad news goes way beyond a single "noisy" statistic in one monthly jobs report:

Compared with 12 months ago, the BLS found that the level of employed women has grown by more than 870,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis. The male gender has lost nearly 1.5 million employed workers over the same timeframe.

So despite what Trump and the White House are trying to convince you this Labor Day, the reality is entirely different:

• There's no jobs boom
• There's no manufacturing resurgence
• Wages aren't keeping up with inflation
• People are dropping out of the labor force in record numbers

Halfway through his second term, Trump's record continues to demonstrate he's a historically lousy job creator — even when compared to other Republican presidents.

So don't be fooled by Trump's latest claims about jobs and the economy.

They're as phony as his new hair color.

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