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brendan boyle
'Dismal' Employment Report Shows Trump Economy Lost 92,000 Jobs in February
“Month after month, the data shows Donald Trump’s economy is failing American families.”
Mar 06, 2026
President Donald Trump's self-proclaimed "greatest" economy in history took another major blow on Friday as the US Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that the American economy lost 92,000 jobs in February.
Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, described the report as "dismal," while noting that the US economy as a whole has actually lost jobs since Trump announced his "liberation day" global tariffs in April 2025.
"Total job gains since from May 2025 to February 2026 are now -19,000," she wrote. "Companies are not hiring in the face of all of these headwinds and uncertainty. And even healthcare is starting to slow down."
University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers argued that "the economic story just changed dramatically" because of the jobs report, which also showed downward revisions to the estimated jobs created in December and January.
"Recession questions are back on the menu," he said.
Mike Konczal, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project, zeroed in on the surprise loss of healthcare jobs in February as particularly concerning given that healthcare has been the lone industry to consistently add jobs in recent months.
"This is the first month in years where healthcare jobs went negative, really changing the dynamic," he said. "Cuts to Medicaid, cuts to ACA... suddenly the thing that was 187% of private jobs since liberation day, holding it together, may be giving out?"
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said that the terrible jobs report was a direct reflection of Trump's economic mismanagement.
"Month after month, the data shows Donald Trump’s economy is failing American families," Boyle said. "The job market is weakening, costs remain high, and Trump’s illegal tariff taxes continue to hurt businesses and workers. Trump and his allies in Congress know their agenda isn’t working. Instead of helping working families, they are pushing more tariff taxes and more tax breaks for billionaires. It is clear Republicans in Washington simply do not care about working families."
Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, declared that "the deterioration in the labor market is visible from space," and pinned the blame on "Trump’s reckless economic agenda."
"As the president piles on blanket tariffs and oil prices soar," Jacquez said, "today's report confirms he's sent the economy straight into a stagflation spiral."
University of Pennsylvania economist Heather Boushey said weakness in the US economy had been evident for several months, although Friday's jobs report showed the largest job losses of any month during Trump's second term.
"Today's data should not come as a shock as there have been signs of weakening in the US labor market for quite some time," she said. "The Trump administration’s focus on undermining the US economy rather than investing in America may be coming home to roost."
Daniel Hornung, policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, said that the bad jobs report will make things even harder for the US Federal Reserve when it comes to making interest rate cut decisions.
"This morning’s report... comes at a difficult moment, with inflation still above target and an oil price shock threatening to raise inflation further," Hornung said. "The report complicates the Fed’s efforts to keep both unemployment and inflation low, and it makes it difficult for the [Trump] administration to argue heading into the midterms that their policies are leading to the kind of growth or improvement in living standards that they’ve long promised."
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'That’s Not Winning': Record Numbers of US Workers Are Raiding Their 401(k)s in Trump Economy
"Instead of helping, Trump made the largest healthcare cuts in American history and doubled down on his costly tariff taxes," said Rep. Brendon Boyle.
Mar 04, 2026
Even as President Donald Trump has declared that the US is in a "golden age" with the "greatest" economy on record, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that a record number of US workers are dipping into their retirement savings.
The Journal cited recent data from Vanguard Group showing that 6% of the 401(k) plans it administers took a hardship withdrawal in 2025, up from 4.8% that took such a withdrawal in 2024.
The top reasons for such withdrawals last year were avoiding eviction or paying off medical expenses, according to Vanguard.
The Journal noted that the Vanguard data about hardship withdrawals comes as "more Americans are falling behind on debt payments, including on some types of mortgages, putting them at risk of foreclosure," and "the average income of clients seeking help from credit-counseling agencies is rising."
Some Democrats quickly pounced on the Journal report, which they said undercut Trump's rosy assessment of the US economy.
"Record numbers of Americans are raiding their 401(k)s to avoid eviction or pay medical bills," wrote Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.). "That's not winning."
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) pointed to the Journal report and accused Trump and the GOP of exacerbating these problems with the cuts to Medicaid contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that the party passed in 2025.
"A record number of Americans are dipping into their retirement savings just to stay afloat," wrote Boyle, the ranking member of the House Budget Committee. "A leading cause: Skyrocketing healthcare costs. Instead of helping, Trump made the largest healthcare cuts in American history and doubled down on his costly tariff taxes."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) responded to the report by saying, "This is not the golden age Donald Trump promised."
Andrew Bates, former senior deputy press secretary for President Joe Biden, also pointed to the GOP budget law as a key reasons for Americans' deteriorating financial security.
"The GOP in Washington makes the biggest healthcare and energy cuts in history, just to lower taxes for the rich," he wrote. "'Golden Age' for Jeffrey Epstein’s surviving friends, shittiness for everyone else."
Ann Larson, co-founder of Debt Collective, noted that while the data on 401(k) withdrawals is disturbing, it doesn't tell the whole story of the dire overall state of Americans' finances.
"This is bad, but add in the almost half of older Americans who have ZERO retirement savings to pull from," Larson wrote, "and the picture is even more horrifying."
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Critics Say Trump 'Joke Healthcare Plan' Nothing But a 'Con' of the American People
“In the longer term, we must finally pass Medicare for All, an actually great healthcare plan," said one campaigner.
Jan 15, 2026
US President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a "Great Healthcare Plan" that critics panned for being "short on details," arguing that—contrary to White House claims—the scheme will lead to higher consumer costs and less care.
Trump called on Congress to pass his proposal, which he said will "lower drug prices, lower insurance premiums, hold big insurance companies accountable, and maximize price transparency."
However, the advocacy group Protect Our Care called the proposal a "joke healthcare plan" and a "sad attempt to continue gaslighting the American people."
"Since taking office, President Trump and his cronies in Congress have taken a hammer to American healthcare to enrich billionaires and big corporations," the group said. "First, they slashed $1 trillion dollars from Medicaid, and then they doubled, tripled, and quadrupled health premiums for nearly 22 million Americans already struggling to get by in Trump’s unaffordable America."
"Now that it is clear that busting working families’ budgets is bad policy and bad politics, Trump is scrambling for a lifeline," Protect Our Care added. "The solution to ending the Trump-GOP premium disaster isn’t rocket science. It is the three-year, clean extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits that the House passed. This commonsense solution that Trump callously threatened to veto is now sitting on Senate Republican Leader John Thune’s (SD) desk."
Trump’s new health care plan doesn’t help people facing skyrocketing ACA premiums.No fix for affordability. No solution for families struggling to stay covered.Just another empty framework while costs climb.
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— Protect Our Care (@protectourcare.org) January 15, 2026 at 12:57 PM
The Senate—which last month voted down a similar three-year-extension to what House lawmakers passed—has yet to schedule a vote on the extension. An attempt to advance the bill through a unanimous consent agreement was blocked by Republicans on Wednesday.
Congressman Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said in a statement Thursday that “Trump’s half-baked healthcare ‘plan’ is a con that does nothing to help Americans facing soaring costs and would raise healthcare expenses while cutting coverage."
"That’s no surprise from a president who is taking healthcare away from 15 million Americans to pay for tax breaks for billionaires," he added. "If the White House is serious about lowering healthcare costs right now, they should support legislation to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits that already passed the House with bipartisan support. The American people deserve real solutions, not gimmicks.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that a three-year extension of the enhanced ACA premium tax credits would increase the number of Americans with health insurance by millions, including approximately 3 million in 2027 and 4 million in 2028.
Eagan Kemp, healthcare policy advocate at the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a statement Thursday that “Trump’s Great Healthcare Plan is impressive only in the fact that it isn’t great, wouldn’t substantively improve healthcare, and isn’t even detailed enough to be considered a plan."
“Trump and his cronies have had more than a decade to come up with something beyond ‘concepts of a plan’ but have failed time and time again," Kemp continued. "The American people are suffering under a broken healthcare system that has been made worse by Trump and his MAGA allies."
“By passing tax cuts for billionaires and paying for them through healthcare cuts for tens of millions of people, Trump and Republicans showed their disdain for everyday Americans. In the short run, the Senate must follow the lead of the House and pass a clean three-year extension of the ACA subsidies," he said.
“In the longer term," Kemp added, "we must finally pass Medicare for All, an actually great healthcare plan, to finally guarantee everyone in the US can get the care they need throughout their lives without financial barriers."
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