August 2025 Jobs Report: The Collapse Accelerates

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by WILL FOLKS

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If July was bad, August was downright atrocious for job creation in the United States, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Per the BLS report (.pdf), the American economy added an anemic 22,000 jobs last month – well below expectations and also substantially south of July’s revised print of 79,000 new positions. That number was modestly higher than the original print of 73,000 new jobs in July, but June’s numbers – originally touted as a gain of 147,000 positions – were revised downward for the second month in a row.

The new job gain numbers for June? Um, there were no job gains… the economy lost 13,000 positions.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s the first negative jobs reading since December 2020 – the final month of president Donald Trump‘s first term in office. As a result, the top-line unemployment rate ticked up a tenth of a percent to 4.3% – although the labor participation rate rose by the same amount to 62.3%.

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Unfortunately, full-time jobs dipped by 357,000 – marking the second straight month of deep losses on that indicator. There was also an unexpected spike in multiple jobholders – 443,000, the largest monthly increase since the Covid-19 crash – which pushed this number to nearly 8.8 million.

“This was easily the ugliest jobs report we have seen since Covid,” the financial website Zero Hedge noted.

Days earlier, Zero Hedge reported that during the month of June there were 55,000 fewer job openings than there were unemployed workers – the “first negative print in this series since April 2021.”

“The U.S. (has) never entered a recession in a period when there were more job openings than unemployed workers (i.e. the job market was supply constrained),” the website noted. “As of this moment, we know it is no longer supply constrained and is instead demand constrained.”

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While the news was indeed grim for Trump on all fronts, the president could actually wind up getting what he wants out of the abysmal report. The terrible employment readings mean it is infinitely more likely embattled Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell will cut interest rates – perhaps by as much as half a percentage point (i.e. 50bps) – when his secretive central bank cohorts meet later this week.

In fact, as with the last jobs report, speculation ran wild that Trump – who recently fired the head of the BLS – was intentionally tanking the jobs numbers to secure a bigger rate cut.

“Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should have lowered rates long ago,” Trump posted on his Truth Social page in response to the data. “As usual, he’s ‘Too Late!'”

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As we’ve previously discussed, the ostensibly apolitical Fed has played politics with interest rates before, cutting them last September to try and boost economic activity during the final months of the Biden administration.

During Trump’s first term in office, rates were raised seven times in less than two years. By contrast, the central bank raised rates just twice during the entire eight years Barack Obama was in office – and one of those rate hikes was approved in December of 2016, the month after Trump was elected.

For those of you unfamiliar with the rate cut calculus, higher rates limit borrowing, essentially pumping the brakes on economic activity. Conversely, low interest rates allow for cheaper borrowing – which stimulates investment, jobs and economic growth, theoretically. Rates are lowered when the economy needs a boost. They are raised when policymakers want economic growth to cool so they can get a handle on inflation.

Count on FITSNews to keep close tabs on the Fed’s next meeting, currently scheduled for September 16-17, 2025.

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THE REPORT…

(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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