{"id":373212,"date":"2025-12-28T14:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T14:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/373212\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T14:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T14:37:07","slug":"the-2025-us-economy-in-charts-rising-prices-hiring-slowdown-rollercoaster-growth-us-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/373212\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2025 US economy \u2013 in charts: rising prices, hiring slowdown, rollercoaster growth | US economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US economy is thriving, according to Donald Trump: jobs are surging, prices are falling, wages are soaring. The government\u2019s own official statistics paint a more complicated picture<\/a> of 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump Economic Golden Age is FULL steam ahead,\u201d the president claimed on social media, after growth data<\/a> for the third quarter of the year \u2013 covering July, August and September \u2013 was unexpectedly strong.<\/p>\n

But other key indicators have been far less robust in 2025. If Trump is right, and an unprecedented economic boom is about to take hold, the foundations appear fragile.<\/p>\n

Inflation<\/p>\n

The cost of living \u2013 and its sharp rise, for many Americans, in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic \u2013 was central to Trump\u2019s fight for re-election in 2024. While inflation peaked at its highest level in a generation in 2022, prices remained high<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to tackle this problem and bring down not only inflation \u2013 the rate at which prices rise \u2013 but prices themselves.<\/p>\n

A line chart showing the latest inflation figures in the US<\/a><\/p>\n

But inflation held firm in 2025, as the White House pressed ahead with Trump\u2019s flagship economic policy. Despite his rhetoric on reducing prices, many economists feared the president\u2019s sweeping tariffs on imports from overseas risked driving them higher.<\/p>\n

Interest rates<\/p>\n

Price growth fell sharply after policymakers at the US Federal Reserve launched an aggressive campaign to cool the US economy<\/a>, rapidly increasing interest rates in an attempt to reduce inflation.<\/p>\n

A chart showing the federal interest rate in the US<\/a><\/p>\n

By the turn of the year, the Fed had already started to bring rates down<\/a> from their two-decade high. But policymakers, led by the central bank\u2019s chair, Jerome Powell, wanted to tread carefully \u2013 and were anxious that cutting rates too aggressively would imperil the progress they had made on inflation.<\/p>\n

Trump, no careful treader, returned to office demanding a rapid return to low rates to spur economic growth and berating \u201cnumbskull\u201d<\/a> Powell (whom he appointed). His public demands and attacks were coolly brushed off<\/a> by Powell. But by the end of the year, Trump had tried to bolster the Fed\u2019s rate-setting board with officials who were more in line with his thinking, dividing opinion<\/a> on the Fed. Next year, he gets to replace Powell.<\/p>\n

Employment<\/p>\n

A post-pandemic surge in jobs growth was already losing steam by last year. Trump tapped into Americans\u2019 frustrations with the economy, promising a \u201cmanufacturing renaissance\u201d that would set the stage for another jobs surge.<\/p>\n

A chart showing the latest US employment figures<\/a><\/p>\n

The renaissance has yet to arrive, however, and over the summer, growth in the labor force appeared to stall altogether. Rather than add jobs, the US economy actually shed them in June and August. And in October, amid the longest government shutdown in history<\/a>, it lost an estimated 105,000.<\/p>\n

The unemployment rate \u2013 the percentage of the US labor force that is out of work \u2013 has meanwhile been rising throughout the year, and in November scaled its highest level since September 2021.<\/p>\n

The president tried to push back, claiming \u201cthe only reason\u201d unemployment had climbed was because the federal workforce had declined \u2013 although the federal workforce has fallen 271,000 since January, while the number of unemployed Americans has risen by about a million.<\/p>\n

A line chart showing that the unemployment rate in the US has continued to rise<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI wish the Fake News would report the 4.5% correctly,\u201d he added on social media earlier this month, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics put November\u2019s unemployment rate at 4.6%.<\/p>\n

Growth<\/p>\n

By the main measure of economic growth \u2013 gross domestic product, or GDP \u2013 the US economy has endured a rollercoaster year. It shrank in the first quarter<\/a>, amid an influx of imports ahead of Trump\u2019s expected tariff onslaught, before bouncing back in the second and gathering steam in the third.<\/p>\n

A chart showing GDP<\/a><\/p>\n

After growth of 2.8% in 2024, the US economy is expected<\/a> to expand by 2% this year, and 2.1% next year. But many economists did not anticipate such a robust GDP reading for the third quarter, which came ahead of the federal shutdown.<\/p>\n

The last time growth was this strong, during Joe Biden\u2019s presidency, rising prices and patchy labor growth left many struggling to reconcile the headline figures with the day-to-day reality of their lives.<\/p>\n

Trump is promising a historic economic boom. Like Biden, he may well find the real task is not just to deliver it \u2013 but to ensure Americans feel it, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US economy is thriving, according to Donald Trump: jobs are surging, prices are falling, wages are soaring.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-373212","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}