September 5, 2025
You’ve been saying the jobs market is tough. And you’re right – it’s not your imagination. And now we have the actual numbers to prove it and unfortunately things may be getting worse.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the jobs report for the month of August this morning and it’s not great news. Not only did the unemployment rate go up to a level we haven’t seen since 2021 – but for the first time in almost 5 years we lost jobs. Plus – the tariffs are showing up again in this report – and not in the way president trump wants to see. In fact it’s the opposite of his entire tariff goal. But on the upside – this report may have just solidified an interest rate cut from the federal reserve later this month.
So let’s talk about the numbers.
First – according to the BLS report – in the month of August — employers added 22,000 jobs. That is much lower than the expectation and much lower than the rates we were seeing just last year.
Here’s the chart with the jobs added every month since January 2024. Here is August 2025 with 22,000 jobs added. You can see things have been chugging along in the jobs market just fine until right here. This is May of 2025. Look at that drop off in jobs added to payrolls. What caused that? Well – think about what happened here in April. On April 2nd President Trump announced it was liberation day – the day he released his tariff policy. So this number showed up in the first report after that announcement. Then perhaps most concerning is this – June 2025. This is the first time the American economy lost jobs since 2020. The BLS says in June of 2025 we lost 13,000 jobs. Things rebounded in July – when we gained 79,000 jobs. But then in August we dropped off to 22,000 jobs.
Now – let’s look at these six months a little closer. I want to point out that the numbers for June and July we revised today. And again – revisions are not bad. When there are revisions — it just means that more data has come in from American employers making the data we see even more accurate. Would we like to have this data 100% all the time? Of course – but that’s not how these surveys work. And these monthly reports are always *estimates* until the revisions are made.
So let’s talk about the June and July revisions. Because one was revised up and one was revised down. In today’s report the BLS said instead of the previous number of 14,000 jobs added in the month of June – now that we have more data – it was actually a loss of 13,000 jobs in the month of June. And in July – instead of the previously reported 73,000 jobs added to payrolls it was actually 79,000 jobs added. That’s more. Of course – don’t forget this is the first jobs report since President Trump fired the last BLS administrator.
Now – let’s talk about unemployment because this is where you can really see the tariffs coming in. The unemployment rate in the month of august is now sitting at 4.3%. That is the highest number we’ve seen since October of 2021. So where are those jobs being lost? Well – according to today’s report 15,000 government jobs were lost – which is still part of the fallout from the DOGE cuts. Now here’s where we need to think about tariffs — in august we lost 12,000 jobs in wholesale trade and also lost another 12,000 manufacturing jobs bringing the total to 78,000 manufacturing jobs lost in 2025. President trump has said repeatedly the point of his tariffs is to bring manufacturing back to the United States so we can build things in America again. Well – these numbers are showing that’s not happening. In fact – it’s the opposite we’re losing manufacturing jobs – and prices are going up – which we also know is a fact based on the latest inflation report.
Now – these numbers prove the jobs market is absolutely losing steam and unemployment is starting to move in the wrong direction – up. But inflation is also moving in the wrong direction…it’s going up! This makes the Federal Reserve’s job really complicated. In an ideal world, the fed would cut interest rates when the jobs market is holding steady and inflation is trending down. But instead – what we have is the jobs market trending down and inflation trending up. So the Fed has to make a choice either – keep interest rates steady and risk more people losing their jobs and perhaps getting inflation to come down to the target rate of 2%. Or cut interest rates now in the hopes of preventing more job loss but run the risk of inflation going up even further. Most experts believe the fed will cut interest rates at their meeting on September 17th but the question is – by how much.
Read the report here.
