The newly released June jobs report shows the U.S. labor market is “in trouble,” experts say, as downward revisions to April and May have nearly erased much of the job growth from the past three months.
Official unemployment jumped to 4.2%, but without rounding the actual number was 4.28%—nearly 4.3%. Revisions were “larger than normal,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: “With these revisions, employment in May and June combined is 258,000 lower than previously reported.”
Only 73,000 new jobs were created in June, against already low expectations of 110,000, leading Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo into a temporary on-air “stunned silence” when seeing the report (video below).
Economists and economic experts weighed in.
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“A weak jobs report,” observed Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal.
“I’ve been calling this a ‘Frozen’ job market for awhile,” she added. “Now I would call it a red flag.”
“This labor market is in trouble,” Long continued. “Healthcare are social assistance are pretty much the only sectors hiring. This is NOT healthy.”
“The labor market now looks a lot weaker than expected,” she concluded.
“This is a bad jobs report,” declared Mike Konczal, former Chief Economist of the National Economics Council under President Biden. “73,000 jobs would have been worrisome to begin with, but deeply negative revisions to the previous two-months wiped out much of the recent gains. 2025 looks a lot worse the further we get into it.”
“First brutal jobs print of the Trump term,” wrote Alex Jacquez, former Biden Special Assistant to the President at the White House National Economic Council.
“3-month average payrolls now a whole 35K, the worst performance (excluding the Covid shock) in 12 years. So much winning,” snarked Ian Shepherdson, Editor-in-Chief, Pantheon Macroeconomics. He added: “Uncertainty has killed the labor market in just a few months. Quite an achievement.”
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“May-June-July is the weakest 3-month period of job growth since COVID. If you throw out 2020, it’s the weakest 3-month period since 2010 and the aftermath of the Great Recession,” reported journalist Jamie Dupree.
“Trump inherited an economy growing at 3% with strong job growth and steadily declining inflation,” noted Bharat Ramamurti, former Deputy Director of the Biden White House National Economic Council. “With [Trump’s] agenda in place, the economy is now growing at close to 1% with weak job growth and reaccelerating inflation.”
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) also weighed in: “Companies don’t want to create jobs in Trump’s chaos economy with weakening rule of law and rampant corruption.”
Derek Thompson, co-author of “Abundance,” observed: “I think this week provided a clearer answer to the question ‘if the tariffs are so bad, why does the economic data look fine?’ ‘Not fine’ just took a while. Consumer spending in the GDP report is weakening fast. The labor market is sputtering.”
With the video below or at this link.