In a\u00a0note on Saturday<\/a>, Torsten Sl\u00f8k, chief economist at\u00a0Apollo Global Management<\/a>, observed job growth in tariff-impacted sectors is negative, while those not affected by tariffs have seen slower growth but remain in positive territory.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s on-again, off-again tariffs have made that pinning down the exact start of his trade war a bit tricky. In February, he signed an executive order to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, but put the ones on Canada and Mexico on hold until March. <\/p>\n In April, he unveiled his \u201cLiberation Day\u201d tariffs on nearly all countries, but put those on hold after a week amid a market crash. Since then, Trump has reached deals with several trading partners while talks with China continue. But for more than 90 countries\u00a0without such deals, so-called reciprocal tariffs took effect in August, though they also face a major legal challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n For his part, Sl\u00f8k sees March as the start of the trade war and listed manufacturing, mining and logging, construction, wholesales trade, retail trade, transportation, and warehousing as the industries impacted by tariffs.<\/p>\n Apollo Global Management<\/p>\n Using that timeline and those sectors, a deep dive into Bureau of Labor Statistics data<\/a> reveals which parts of the economy have been hurt the most.<\/p>\n Across all the tariff-impacted industries, payrolls fell by a net 90,100 after February\u2014the last pre-trade war month. By contrast, payrolls overall grew by 385,000 during that span, as the health care and hospitality sectors<\/a>, which are less affected by tariffs, have been the main drivers of job growth.<\/p>\n But even within tariff-impacted sectors, some areas have suffered more than others. For example, manufacturing shed 41,000 jobs, and wholesale trade lost 34,000. <\/p>\n But construction has been mostly flat, and retail trade even added 19,000 jobs. And while the mining and logging sector has lost 16,000 jobs, that category includes oil and gas extraction, which has been hit by lower crude prices and OPEC+ has ramped up production to grab market share.<\/p>\n To be sure, industries not directory affected by tariffs are cutting staff too, though that could be partly due to the general sense of economic uncertainty that the trade war has created.<\/p>\n For several months now, there have been more industries cutting jobs than adding them, a trend Moody\u2019s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi warned \u201conly happens when the economy is in recession<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration has maintained that its tax cuts and deregulation will stoke more growth, with tariffs eventually creating more jobs and encouraging companies to invest in domestic production.<\/p>\n In an interview on\u00a0NBC\u2019s\u00a0Meet the Press with Kristen Welker<\/a> on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said policies are in place that will create good, high-paying jobs. He also said payroll data collected in August has historically been prone to big revisions later, and he blamed the Federal Reserve for\u00a0not cutting rates sooner<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump was elected for change, and we are going to push through with the economic policies that are going to set the economy right. I believe by the fourth quarter, we\u2019re going to see a substantial acceleration,\u201d Bessent predicted.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Slok-payrolls-2025_8695a4.png\"\/)
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