'Very Significant Sign of Weakening': Bad Jobs Report Sets Off Alarms About US Economy Under Trump

The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Friday showed a significant slowdown in hiring across the economy.

In total, the BLS estimated that a mere 73,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in July, which was well below economists' consensus estimate of 117,500 net job gains.

What really made the latest jobs report concerning, however, was the downward revision of previous months' gains, which the BLS described as "larger than normal." The number of jobs added in May was revised downward from 144,000 to 19,000, while the number of jobs added in June was revised downward from 147,000 to 14,000. Taken together, this means that the economy has added an average of just 35,000 jobs per month over the last three months.

New York Times chief economics correspondent Ben Casselman described the downward revisions as "a very significant sign of weakening" and he noted that healthcare and social assistance jobs accounted for nearly all of last month's gains.

"If it hadn't been for that sector, employment would have fallen slightly," he observed on Bluesky.

Economic analyst Joe Weisenthal, cohost of the Bloomberg podcast "Odd Lots," also zeroed in on the fact that healthcare and social assistance were now carrying the weight for the entire U.S. labor market.

"Brutal," he wrote on X. "If you exclude these two categories, job growth has been running negative for three straight months."

Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, described the July jobs report as a "game changer," and not in a good way.

"The labor market now looks a lot weaker than expected," Long wrote on X. "This puts a September rate cut from the Federal Reserve back on the table."

Market analyst Adam Crisafulli, the founder of Vital Knowledge Media, shared Long's view that the Federal Reserve would likely start cutting rates soon and he even believed that the Fed would have cut rates starting this week had it known about the weakness of the labor market.

"Hard to overstate how bad this jobs report was," he commented on X.

Daniel Hornung, a senior fellow at MIT and former deputy director of the National Economic Council, said that the weak jobs report will only make the Federal Reserve's decisions more perilous in the coming months.

"A turbulent week in markets and the economy is coming to a close with inflation moving higher, while economic and payroll growth are moving lower," he said. "It's a precarious position for the Fed and the economy, largely the result of the [Trump] administration's stagflationary tariff policies, which are set to move even higher beginning next week."

Jessica Fulton, a senior fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, argued that the slowdown in hiring, combined with the increased costs consumers are facing thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs, are putting American workers in a very tight squeeze.

"The economy continues to show signs of weakening even as the White House pushes policies that will raise costs and make it harder for families to make ends meet," she said. "Labor market cracks that showed up for Black women earlier this year are beginning to expand, with Black male unemployment reaching 7% this month. Black workers are often laid off first when the economy slows down."

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, delivered a blistering statement about the jobs report and pointed the finger directly at Trump and Republicans in Congress.

"Under President Trump, job growth is slowing, costs keep rising, and the Big Ugly Law is stripping health care from millions," he said. "While he hands out tax breaks to billionaires and stokes reckless trade wars, middle-class families are left paying the price."