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\n The past two months\u2019 job reports<\/a> and a slew of recent employment data have made clear that America\u2019s labor market has substantially weakened. Many of President Donald Trump\u2019s critics have leveraged such data to claim it\u2019s all his fault, by imposing unprecedented tariffs and strict immigration enforcement operations that have slowed down an otherwise healthy economy.\n <\/p>\n \n Although Trump\u2019s policies may have contributed to some of the most dismal employment data in years, under his watch, he may not be as blame-deserving as his critics have stated.\n <\/p>\n \n As it turns out, the labor market he inherited from former President Joe Biden was not as solid as economists thought of before Tuesday, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its preliminary annual benchmark revisions from between April 2024 and March 2025. Over that time frame, the BLS said 911,000 fewer jobs were added<\/a> compared to prior estimates.\n <\/p>\n \n The revisions show \u201cBiden\u2019s economy was a disaster and the BLS is broken,\u201d White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement.\n <\/p>\n \n At a briefing on Tuesday, Leavitt said that the massive downward revision \u201cmakes it very clear that President Trump inherited a much worse economy by the Biden administration than ever reported.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n She\u2019s right – the historic jobs growth of Biden\u2019s first two years<\/a> certainly slowed in 2023 and petered out in 2024 before rebounding strongly to close his term.\n <\/p>\n \n The revisions are essentially \u201crewriting history,\u201d said Deutsche Bank senior US economist Brett Ryan.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhat it shows is that we\u2019ve been in this low hiring, low firing type labor market for a significant period of time,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing now is more of the same, rather than a further downshift in the labor market.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n However, the new data doesn\u2019t fully let Trump off the hook for the deteriorating labor market.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump was dealt worse cards to begin with than previously known, which means the recently reported decline in hiring \u2013 and in some sectors, layoffs \u2013 can be viewed in part as a continuation of where things left off when Biden left the White House in January.\n <\/p>\n \n For example, the professional and business services sector laid off 17,000 workers last month, among the steepest cuts across all sectors. That sector also saw some of the steepest downward revisions (-158,000) in the revised data released Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n \n Similarly, the wholesale trade industry lost nearly 12,000 workers last month and has shed workers in four of Trump\u2019s first six months in office. Biden\u2019s economy was initially believed to have added 41,000 workers in those fields last year \u2013 but Tuesday\u2019s revision showed those jobs were overcounted by a staggering 110,000 jobs between April 2024 and March 2025. So Trump\u2019s struggles make a bit more sense in that context.\n <\/p>\n \n However, Trump has put in place historic tariffs, which also may have exacerbated struggles in wholesale trade positions as international trade \u2013 particularly with China \u2013 froze up in the spring.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump\u2019s tariffs were also put in place in part to revive<\/a> America\u2019s moribund manufacturing industry. Although manufacturing jobs sharply rebounded in Biden\u2019s first two years in office, gaining 736,000 jobs in 2021 and 2022, factories shed 129,000 jobs in 2023 and 2024.\n <\/p>\n \n If Tuesday\u2019s preliminary revisions hold up, the sector would have lost another 95,000 jobs between April 2024 and March 2025. So factory hiring under Biden was almost twice as bad as initially believed when Trump took office, giving the president an even trickier-than-expected problem to solve.\n <\/p>\n \n But Trump\u2019s tariffs so far have failed to ignite job growth in the sector: Manufacturing jobs have fallen<\/a> in each of the past four months, by a combined 42,000 jobs.\n <\/p>\n \n In total, the revisions announced Tuesday mean US employers hired just 146,500 workers per month from April 2024 to March 2025. That\u2019s 76,000 fewer people hired on average compared to prior figures.\n <\/p>\n \n But the latest figures are subject to one more final revision set to be released in February. Economists are largely expecting the final revision to show more hiring occured than than the BLS reported Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n![\"Shipping](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/gettyimages-2215919967.jpg\")
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