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Sept. 8, 2025, 2:59 PM EDT<\/p>\n
By Ali Velshi<\/p>\n
This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 6 <\/a>episode of \u201cVelshi.\u201d<\/p>\n As Jay-Z put it, \u201cMen lie, women lie, numbers don\u2019t.\u201d That adage is especially pertinent now in light of recent economic news. That\u2019s because a month after Donald Trump<\/a> claimed a lackluster July jobs report was \u201cRIGGED\u201d to make him look bad and fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, August\u2019s jobs report was even worse.<\/p>\n According to Friday\u2019s report<\/a>, the labor market added just 22,000 jobs in August. Forecasters were expecting 75,000. The unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.3%, the highest since 2021. Revisions to previous reports also indicated the labor market actually lost 13,000 jobs in June \u2014 the first time that\u2019s happened since the pandemic.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the thing about the monthly job numbers<\/a> compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Most people usually just see a few headline numbers, but if you look under the hood at where our now paltry and possibly negative job growth is coming from, it\u2019s not pretty either.<\/p>\n The Fed\u2019s two priorities, by law, are maximizing employment and keeping inflation low, and right now those two goals are in conflict with one another.<\/p>\n The health care sector has consistently added the most jobs to the economy \u2014 as it almost always does \u2014 even when the market is losing jobs. But now, it\u2019s doing even more of the heavy lifting: Without the added 31,000 health care jobs, this month\u2019s report would, in fact, have been negative.<\/p>\n One of the president\u2019s stated goals in his global trade war was to reshore manufacturing<\/a>, but the industry has been shrinking all year. Last month, 12,000 manufacturing jobs were lost and 78,000 have been lost this year.<\/p>\n Another red flag: College graduates and young people<\/a> at large are struggling to find their footing in the job market. The unemployment rate among recent college graduates is higher than the national average; the Federal Reserve says it averaged 5.3% this summer, versus the unemployment rate for all Americans of 4.3%.<\/p>\n Even higher: the unemployment rate for Black Americans. It hit 7.5%, up from 7.2% last month. African Americans also disproportionately work for the federal government, which has been slashed by DOGE<\/a>.<\/p>\n And for the first time since April 2021, there are more unemployed people than there are available jobs in the country. The caveat here is that those workers and those jobs don\u2019t meld together perfectly \u2014 job seekers don\u2019t always have the right skills or live in the right place needed for the available jobs \u2014 but taken alongside Friday\u2019s report, what you\u2019ve got is an economy that could be teetering on the edge. <\/p>\n Following this report, the president is almost certain to get his long-requested interest rate cut<\/a> from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell<\/a>. Now, easing interest rates to stimulate the labor market makes sense in a vacuum, but we don\u2019t live in one. Trump\u2019s other policies, like his global tariffs, mean rising prices, and high inflation is often fought by increasing interest rates. <\/p>\n The Fed\u2019s two priorities, by law, are maximizing employment and keeping inflation low, and right now those two goals are in conflict with one another.<\/p>\n