July Job Losses Report Adds to Pressure on Trump Ahead of Midterms

Republicans desperate for positive economic news ahead of the midterms are running out of opportunities. While Donald Trump keeps talking about a “golden age” and record stock markets, the numbers tell a different story for ordinary Americans. Inflation remains higher than when he took office and the gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of just 1.5 percent in the second quarter. And now, the economy is shedding jobs again.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced on Friday that nonfarm payrolls decreased by 23,000 in July. In addition, the figures for May and June had been revised downwards by a total of 100,000.

This means that the average monthly jobs gain was just 34,000 over the past year, far behind the job creation in Joe Biden’s last twelve months in office.

While the unemployment rate dropped slightly to 4.1 percent, the reason is that the labor force participation rate fell to its lowest level in more than five years — an indication that many Americans stopped looking for jobs.

Furthermore, average hourly earnings were virtually stagnant. Over the past year, they grew less than inflation, meaning that the purchasing power of workers’ wages has decreased.

All of this is terrible news for Trump and the GOP, who are trying to stave off a blue wave in November.

While the president believes that any poll showing his historically low approval ratings is “fake” and that the affordability crisis is a “hoax,” Republicans living in reality know that the state of the economy and the high cost of living pose major problems for them.

For the first time in a decade, voters are saying that they prefer Democrats over the GOP when it comes to the stewardship of the economy.

“President Trump’s failing economic agenda is weakening the labor market,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who added that “wage growth slowed, straining families’ paychecks even more as they struggle to keep up with Trump’s inflation.”

Republicans have little time and few chances to convince them that their approach is working.

Ahead of the midterms, the administration will only release two more employment reports, the third quarter GDP update, and, perhaps most crucially, three more inflation reports.

With the White House in desperation mode, Warren worries that the administration could try to fudge the numbers a bit, especially in light of recently announced changes to the methodology of how it measures inflation.

“Given the potential impact these methodological changes could have on the Federal Reserve’s monetary policymaking, as well as the importance of transparency amidst the Trump Administration’s attacks on the integrity of the nation’s statistical system, the Department and BEA have an obligation to explain to the public its reasoning for these decisions and the processes by which these decisions were made,” said Warren in a letter to Under Secretary of Commerce Joyce Meyer and Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Director Vipin Arora.

Warren noted that experts believe these changes could lower the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge by 0.2 percent.

Arguing that it is “more important than ever that the Department and BEA publicly explain and justify their decisions to change methodologies that will affect American households,” the lawmaker, who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, requested the officials to not only answer some questions about the change but also to commit that any reports they release this year would show how much inflation has increased using both the old and the new methodologies, and to also retroactively show how these changes would have affected inflation during Biden’s last year in office.