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by WILL FOLKS
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As his administration drops more than $1 billion a day on an escalating war halfway around the world, U.S. president Donald Trump received some terrible economic news on the home front this week.
According to the latest data from his Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the American economy shed 92,000 jobs during the month of February – a massive and unexpected decline from January’s anemic revised reading of 126,000 new jobs. Analysts had expected the economy to add an estimated 55,000 new jobs, making this a dreaded “six-sigma miss.” With December’s print also revised downward to show a loss of 17,000 jobs, three of the last five employment readings (and five of the last nine readings) have been in the red.
Meaning America’s employment engine is stalling out…
Private payrolls also collapsed in February, shedding 86,000 positions (analysts had expected an uptick of 60,000 new jobs).
Labor participation in February dipped to 62%, its lowest reading since November 2021, while the widely watched unemployment rate ticked up from 4.3% to 4.4%.
According to analysts at RBC, “the rise in the unemployment rate was driven by primarily by reentrants looking for work,” with this metric for the moment being the one to watch as it relates to cyclical hiring.
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“The kneejerk reaction is, well, bad,” the website Zero Hedge noted in response to the numbers. “This was about as ugly as it could be, and coming in (at) a time when input costs are soaring due to the Iran war, it screams AI-driven stagflation.”
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is beginning to have an impact on the American workforce, although analysts at JP Morgan assert it will be a “gradual disruption.”
“There is no magic number of how many jobs will be at risk when AI technology has its breakthrough moment,” JP Morgan’s analysis noted. “Estimates range from 14% to 30% for displacement, with as many as 80% of Americans being impacted in some way.”
Unlike prior labor market downturns, jobs lost to AI won’t be coming back quickly… and may not come back at all.
“Previous eras of mass unemployment (and recession) have been driven by demand,” JP Morgan’s analysts continued. “When people lose their jobs, they expect to find another job in the future. The uncertainty is when, not if, a new job would be on the table. But displacement from the AI revolution means the unemployment rate, in theory, could spike and plateau there. That is, until a more substantial part of the workforce is reskilled and hired for jobs that AI cannot do.”
So… is there any good news for the American labor market? In a word, “no.” Which is why America’s leaders really ought to stop wasting their time (and our money) on a needless conflict in Iran.
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THE RELEASE…
(BLS)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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7 comments
“Which is why America’s leaders really ought to stop wasting their time (and our money) on a needless conflict in Iran.”
There are no “America’s leaders” left; Trump’s got every republican firmly attached to his ass so he is the only leader that counts now.
He’s ready to go into Cuba now. There is no stopping the mad king at this point.
Average annual percentage Job Growth by Party 1939 through 2023
Democratic Presidents +2.913%
Republican Presidents +0.821%
It’s amazing what happens when you concentrate on making life better for average Americans and ignore what is best for the billionaire class. On average, Democratic administrations produce 3 times as many jobs as Republican Administrations. This is just basic math. If I were Trump, I would probably say 3,000% more, but I am not, so I will leave it at 300%. It looks like Trump will bring down the Republican Average for his second term, just like he did during his first term.
Yeah.. about those numbers…. they include the millions of men pulled out of the unemployment line after two full terms of FDR’s Great Depression era to go into WWII. The average monthly unemployment rate was about 10.5% in the 12 months leading up to Pearl Harbor. Twelve months later it was 2.7%. You don’t get credit as a leader for unemployment going down because of war….nobody wants that. And unemployment is a lagging financial indicator, meaning it generally moves 6-12 months after something bad happens – be it a market bubble or the end of a bad presidential administration. And then you have the explosive growth immediately after WWII because of the men returning home, getting married and having children after about 4 years of being under war-time rationing. Again, no gold star for that. Biden gets no gold star for the economy coming back after the COVID shutdowns i.e., returning to normal.
and on the “lagging” part… Obama inherited a real mess from the 2008 market collapse in the Bush administration – he can’t really be faulted for at least the first two years of his administration on employment.
Republicans always have an excuse as to why they don’t produce jobs. It’s never their fault. A Republican crashes the economy and loses thousands of jobs (like Bush 2 and Trump), a Democrat fixes it, but does not get credit for fixing it. Whatever. I don’t think the Roosevelt numbers include people going to war, but even if they did and you took those out, the numbers would still be staggeringly different.
My 90-year-old dad has been a Democrat his whole life, despite living in a small southern town and attending a Baptist Church. Growing up, I would ask him why. His answer was, my life was always better when Democrats were in office; and the only time I was ever unemployed was when Republicans were in office. I think he is right. At some point, you just have to admit that for the average American, their life has been better under Democratic Administrations. That is why Republicans need culture wars, racism, and fake Christianity to win elections.
Now, if you are a member of the richest 5.00%, your perception will be totally different. Because you have seen staggering growth in income and wealth under Republicans, along with staggering reductions in your tax rate. In the years of the highest job gains over the past century +- the taxes on the richest have been significantly higher than now. And if you are among the richest, you don’t care about the ballooning federal deficit, because it will never affect you, and what it actually represents is the government moving wealth from average Americans to the richest Americans.
Elect a clown, expect a circus
If we elect Kamala, we’ll get World War 3.
If we elect Trump, they just won’t call it World War 3. They’ll just give it some extremely Reddit-inspired name like Epic Fury.
*Insert soy wojack face here.*