The Trump Jobs Mirage

DJT has put us on a Dismal Jobs Trajectory — and it's getting worse

Disastrous.

That's the only way to describe Trump's record on jobs.

It was true in his first term.

It's truer than ever 18 months into his second.

Yet, just as they did in his first term, the complicit corporate media are letting him get away with it again.

In fact, this time they're covering for him even more.

Consider the basic facts of these two separate jobs reports, the first from 2016 (Obama), the second from 2025 (Trump 2.0):

1. 151,000 jobs created. Unemployment falls to an 8-year low.
2. 119,000 jobs created. Unemployment rises to 3-year high.

In covering the first story during the Obama years, CBS News' February 2016 headline announced that "U.S. employment growth slows... ." The first line of the article declared that "fewer-than-expected jobs" had been created. If you stopped there, all you got was a downbeat assessment of a faltering economy. You had to keep reading to hear from economic experts who told CBS that the jobs report actually showed a "pretty healthy labor market" and that overall the "report was very encouraging."

In covering the second story in November 2025, shortly after the network had been acquired by its new Trump-friendly owners, CBS News declared in its headline that the numbers showed an economy "blowing past expectations." Readers had to stick around until the seventh paragraph to get the crucial observation that "the job market has been losing momentum for much of this year." Also buried in paragraph seven: the reality that a flood of layoff announcements since the September jobs data was tallied had turned October 2025 into "the worst October for job reductions in 22 years."

Most real-time reporting about monthly jobs numbers is, of course, driven to a large extent by whether those numbers meet or miss "Wall Street expectations."

But when it comes to Trump, the mainstream media consistently falls for the hype — and fails to communicate the bigger picture, especially when the news is bad.

Trump 1.0: The media were complicit in creating the myth of "The Trump Economy"

As long-time readers of this newsletter know, the idea that Trump created an economic boom in his first term was always a complete fiction.

Back in 2020, one of my biggest frustrations was the way the corporate media allowed Trump's lies about creating "the greatest economy ever" to go largely unchallenged.

What actually happened: When Trump left office in disgrace in January 2021, he had "the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover" (Fortune).

Nearly 3,000,000 jobs were lost in the U.S. during his disastrous first term.

Why? Because (not for the first time) Trump squandered his inheritance: In 2017, Obama had delivered to Trump a nation in the midst of a historic economic recovery:

• The U.S. was enjoying a record-breaking expansion which had truly made America great again following the Bush Crash of 2008.
• Obama's policies lifted the U.S. and the world out of the Great Recession that lasted from December 2007 to June 2009.
• The "Obama economy" Trump inherited was so strong that by 2019 America was celebrating "the longest U.S. economic expansion in history" (CNBC).

It didn't last: Before the end of 2019 — i.e. before Covid hit in 2020 — Trump's mismanagement had already ground the U.S. economy to a virtual halt.

• America's farmers had already received two "massive" Trump bailouts, collectivistly totaling $28 billion.
• U.S. manufacturing was already in a recession.

As The Wall Street Journal tweeted on 1 Jan 2020: "Auto debt is up. Student debt is up. Unsecured loans are back. The American middle class is drowning."

That's why, when Covid arrived, the Trump economy collapsed like a house of cards.

Of course, things only got worse from there, as Trump's reckless and psychopathic behavior, his relentless stupidity, and his unprecedented (at the time) corruption turned 2020 into the worst year ever for the U.S. economy.

Yet "because Covid" the media gave Trump a pass on everything, effectively sweeping all the economic failings of Trump's first term under the rug, allowing the myth of the "Trump economy" to endure.

Trump 2.0: The oligarch-owned corporate media keeps downplaying Dear Leader's failures

The way the media played along with the "Trump economy" myth-making the first time around was bad enough.

This time around, the oligarchs have taken media sycophancy to an entirely new level.

Another squandered inheritance: In Trump's first 18 months back in office, average monthly job creation has plunged to below 40,000. That represents a dramatic and immediate slowdown from the job-creation momentum of the Biden economy.

Compared to other recent presidencies, including Trump's own first term — when he created 2.9 million more jobs in the first 18 months than he has so far in his second term — it's a disaster of historic proportions.

Yet, according to Ellison-owned CBS News, the worst jobs president in living memory keeps "blowing past expectations": That exact phrasing — claiming that monthly jobs numbers were "blowing past expectations" in the midst of a historic collapse in job growth — appeared in headlines about the September 2025, January 2026 and April, 2026 jobs reports.

Given that those initial reports showed only 119,000, 130,000 and 115,000 jobs, respectively, the headlines were in stark contrast to how similar numbers were reported by the pre-Ellison CBS News during Trump's first term.

• For example, CBS News characterized the 148,000 jobs created in December 2017 as "modest." CBS News reported that the September 2019 report showing 136,000 new jobs was not just "subpar," but also a sign that "the U.S. economy is cooling."

This time around, the U.S. economy is definitely cooling.

When downward revisions by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are factored in, monthly job growth in the U.S. has averaged an incredibly weak 36,000 jobs per month over the past 12 months.

A jobs disaster even the pro-Trump "Ministry of Propaganda" can't conceal

Under Trump, American workers, especially the blue-collar white men who propelled his victory in 2024, simply can't catch a break.

Outside of healthcare and social assistance, 230,000 jobs have already evaporated: Amid stagnation in manufacturing and construction, the only real job growth in the Trump 2.0 economy can be found in the healthcare and social assistance sectors.

Without this form of job creation — driven by the healthcare needs of an aging population, irrespective of which party is in power — average job creation in Trump's second term is -13,000 each month.

Trump's promise that he would restore manufacturing? Up in smoke. Despite Trump's promise that his illegal and inflationary tariffs would bring U.S. manufacturing roaring back, more than 110,000 manufacturing jobs have already been lost during his second term.

Adding insult to injury: The blue-collar men who believed Trump would create an economy that worked for them have been forced to watch Trump usher in an era of unprecedented financial and political corruption in which billionaires get the breaks, the Epstein Class gets protection — and the Trump Crime Family just keeps working its scams and lining its pockets.

DJT has put us on a Dismal Jobs Trajectory — and it's getting worse

If the June jobs report was downbeat, the sudden collapse of America's workforce was a debacle.

As CNBC reported:

In June alone, the labor force... plummeted by 720,000. Similarly, the rolls of those counted as not in the labor force, a group that includes the unemployed and those not looking for work, jumped by 832,000.... the survey of households, which counts the actual level of those working, tumbled by 507,000.

On a year-over-year basis, the U.S. labor force has declined by over 1 million.

Excluding the Covid-era jobs market, the current labor participation rate of 61.5% is the lowest since June 1976.

This mass exodus from the job market is a troubling sign for an already-teetering economy.

One reason for the exodus is that simply landing a job in the new Trump economy has become "a real headache," according to Michele Evermore, a senior fellow at the National Employment Law Project.

As she told USA Today: "That’s worth thinking about when you see people demoralized and not wanting to work."

And here's something else worth thinking about: The next time the corporate media presents mediocre job numbers as a triumph for Trump, look beyond the headline for the actual trend.

Be sure you see the full picture. Not the Trump mirage.

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