The federal government, its workforce targeted by Trump and by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, cut 15,000 jobs last month.
The American job market, a pillar of U.S. economic strength since the pandemic, is crumbling under the weight of President Donald Trump’s erratic economic policies.
Uncertain about where things are headed, companies have grown increasingly reluctant to hire, leaving agonized jobseekers unable to find work and weighing on consumers who account for 70% of all U.S. economic activity. Their spending has been the engine behind the world’s biggest economy since the COVID-19 disruptions of 2020.
The Labor Department reported Friday that U.S. employers — companies, government agencies and nonprofits — added just 22,000 jobs last month, down from 79,000 in July and well below the 80,000 that economists had expected.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3% last month, also worse than expected and the highest since 2021.
“U.S. labor market deterioration intensified in August,’’ Scott Anderson, chief U.S. economist at BMO Capital Market, wrote in a commentary, noting that hiring was “slumping dangerously close to stall speed. This raises the risk of a harder landing for consumer spending and the economy in the months ahead.’’
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