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economic policy institute
No, Says Economist, March US Jobs Report 'Is Not Good'
"The latest jobs data show how President Trump's mismanagement of the economy—both domestically and internationally—is harming workers at home," said another expert.
Apr 03, 2026
As US Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer on Friday declared that "America's economic comeback is on full display" and the country's "workers are winning again" due to what the business press and top newspapers called a "strong" March jobs report, some economists stressed the importance of looking beyond the topline figure and one month of data.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that employers added 178,000 jobs last month, with gains in construction, healthcare, and transportation and warehousing, and declines in the federal government. The unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.3%, with 7.2 million people officially jobless.
"Folks, today's jobs report is not good," declared Heidi Shierholz, president of the think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI). She pointed to average job growth over the past two months, the reason for the drop in unemployment ("people leaving the labor force"), slowing wage growth, and the fact that "the effects of our war in Iran aren't even in these numbers yet."
EPI senior economist Elise Gould further explained those points on social media. Although the report "came in stronger than expected... much of the gain was a bounce back to February declines (now a loss of 133,000 jobs)," she said. "As a result, average monthly growth the last two months was only 22,500 jobs."
As far as the unemployment rate ticking down, "it's important to note that this happened for the 'wrong' reasons as both the labor force participation and the share of the population with a job also ticked down," Gould continued. "Job gains were strongest in healthcare as striking workers returned to work."
"Attacks on the federal workforce continue," she highlighted, with the sector down 18,000 jobs in March and 352,000 positions since January 2025, when President Donald returned to power. "The vital services federal employees provide cannot be done without these essential workers. The cost of these losses are only just beginning."
"Manufacturing rose 15,000 jobs in March, but still has a huge deficit since Trump took office. Since January 2025, the manufacturing sector has lost 82,000 jobs," the economist noted. "Wage growth has been slowing for the last few months, particularly driven by slower growth for production and nonsupervisory workers, roughly the lower 82% of the workforce."
Gould added that "we don't have the inflation data yet to show real wage changes in March, but slowing nominal wage growth coupled with rising prices from the Iran war almost surely means real wages will suffer, contributing to worsening affordability."
Trump and Israel launched their war on Iran at the end of February, and the new data is from the middle of March, so "the impact of the war and higher fuel prices will be limited" in this report, as Center for Economic and Policy Research co-founder Dean Baker acknowledged. "April could look considerably worse."
Breyon Williams, chief economist at another think tank, Groundwork Collaborative, said that "beyond today's headline bounce, the labor market continues to deteriorate under Trump's economic mismanagement: Hiring has ground to a halt, paychecks are shrinking, and workers are giving up on finding a job altogether. A single month of modest gains can't reverse the damage that the president has inflicted on working families."
A former senior Labor Department official who's now chief of policy programs at The Century Foundation, Angela Hanks, similarly asserted that "the latest jobs data show how President Trump's mismanagement of the economy—both domestically and internationally—is harming workers at home."
"While the topline rate does not yet reflect the war's impact on the job market, wage growth has stalled, and oil prices are skyrocketing, resulting in higher prices for consumers and threatening to weaken the job market," she noted. Specifically, according to a Thursday report from Democratic members of the congressional Joint Economic Committee, Americans spent an extra $8.4 billion at the gas pump in the first month of Trump's war.
"Families are already under tremendous pressure from rising prices, slowing job growth, and mounting debt as they struggle to make ends meet, and not seeing help on the way," said Hanks. "Families and workers across the country deserve leadership that puts them first and works to make living a fulfilling life affordable for everyone. Instead, they're stuck with leaders in Washington more focused on needless and damaging wars and slashing the safety net to pay for them."
After passing a 2025 budget package that gave the rich more tax breaks by slashing over $1 trillion from the safety net, including food assistance and Medicaid—which is expected to leave millions of Americans without health insurance—congressional Republicans are considering more healthcare cuts to fund Trump's war. The Pentagon has asked for at least $200 billion for Iran, and more broadly, the president wants an unprecedented $1.5 trillion in military spending for the next fiscal year.
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Report Details How Trump Economic Agenda ‘Will Make Ordinary Families Reliably Poorer in the Future’
In just one year, Republicans' 2025 budget package is expected to increase income inequality at quadruple the rate seen over the past 40 years.
Feb 24, 2026
President Donald Trump's economic agenda "will make ordinary families reliably poorer in the future," according to the author of a report published Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute.
Josh Bivens, EPI's chief economist, said Trump's slashing of federal spending and jobs, mass deportations, chaotic tariffs, and anti-labor policies were suppressing hiring and wages, draining household and business spending, and slowing economic growth.
While a recession is not yet inevitable, Bivens argued that worrying signs are already on the horizon, with 1.4 million fewer new jobs than expected in 2025 and unemployment ticking up to 4.4%, up from the low of 3.4% in April 2023.
For low-wage earners, the past year has been particularly rough. After seeing unusually fast growth during the presidency of Joe Biden, real wages for the bottom 10% of earners fell by 0.3% in 2025.
The report predicts that Republicans' 2025 budget package will reduce “aggregate demand” in the coming years. The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts $100 billion annually from Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), while allowing health insurance subsidies that saved families thousands to expire, which the report projects will cause many families who rely on these benefits to pull back spending in the economy.
While the law reduced taxes, the vast majority of those benefits went to the wealthiest earners, whose spending was already much less constrained by their incomes.
The report notes the astonishing increase in inequality caused by the law. Between the years of 1979 and 2019, which were considered to have seen an explosion of wealth inequality, the share of income claimed by the richest 10% increased by about 0.25% per year.
It found that the GOP budget law will, in just one year, increase the top decile's share of wealth by a full percentage point. In other words, the rate of inequality will "quadruple in its first year."
Aside from this major driver of inequality, the report also says that the Trump administration's hostility toward collective bargaining rights and its mass firings of federal workers would further suppress wages by making the labor market less competitive, and that the president's erratic tariff regime would make those wages less valuable by fueling inflation.
“Disastrous policy choices that led to excess unemployment, slower growth in the economy’s productive capacity, and rising inequality have made life less affordable for typical families in recent decades," Bivens said. "The Trump administration’s policies double down on the worst policy decisions of this period and will make ordinary families reliably poorer in the future, even if an outright recession or spiking inflation does not happen."
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47 Ways Trump Has 'Made Life Less Affordable' in Second Term
"Trump's actions since taking office a year ago reveal a clear and consistent effort... to serve the interests of his billionaire and corporate backers," said a co-author of the Economic Policy Institute report.
Jan 13, 2026
From "stripping collective bargaining rights from more than 1 million federal workers" to "denying 2 million in-home healthcare workers minimum wage and overtime pay," President Donald Trump "has actively made life less affordable for working people."
That's according to a Tuesday report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which cataloged 47 key ways that the 47th president made life worse for working people during the first year of his second term.
The think tank sorted the actions into five categories: eroding workers' wages and economic security; undermining job creation; weakening workers' rights; enabling employer exploitation; and creating an ineffective government.
"Many of the actions outlined here have impacts across categories," the report notes. "Trump's attacks on union workers, for example, reduce workers' wages, weaken workers' rights, and promote employer exploitation of workers."
"Every dollar denied to typical workers in wages ends up as higher income for business owners and corporate managers."
The first section highlights that Trump (1) cut the minimum wage for nearly 400,000 federal contractors, (2) ended enforcement of protections for workers illegally classified as independent contractors, (3) slashed wages of migrant farmworkers in the H-2A program, (4) deprived in-home healthcare workers of minimum wage and overtime pay, and (5) facilitated the inclusion of cryptocurrencies among 401(k) investment options.
On the job creation front, the president (6) paused funding for projects authorized under a bipartisan infrastructure law, (7) signed the Laken Riley Act as part of his mass deportation agenda, (8) revoked an executive order that created a federal interagency working group focused on expanding apprenticeships, (9) is trying to shutter Job Corps centers operated by federal contractors, and (10) disrupted manufacturing supply chains with chaotic trade policy.
In addition to (11) attacking the union rights of over 1 million government employees, Trump (12) delayed enforcement of the silica rule for coal miners, (13) proposed limiting the scope of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's general duty clause, (14) fired National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, (15) stripped work permits and temporary protections from immigrants lawfully in the country, and (16) deterred worker organizing with immigration enforcement actions.
Trump's assault on workers' rights has included (17) nominating Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who has pursued a deregulatory agenda, (18) illegally firing Gwynne Wilcox from the NLRB, (19) ending funding to fight human trafficking and child and forced labor globally, and (20) terminating International Labor Affairs Bureau grants.
Chavez-DeRemer isn't Trump's only controversial pick for a key labor post. He's also nominated (20) Jonathan Berry as solicitor of labor, (21) Crystal Carey as NLRB general counsel, (22) Scott Mayer as an NLRB board member, and (23) Daniel Aronowitz to lead the Employee Benefits Security Administration.
The 47th president has made life less affordable for everyone but himself & his billionaire backersTrump has 😠 slowed job growth,😡 undercut incomes for workers🤬 enriched the ultrawealthyThe latest from @joshbivens-econ.bsky.social , @cmcnich.bsky.social, and Margaret Poydock.
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— Economic Policy Institute (@epi.org) January 13, 2026 at 8:20 AM
Trump has also (24) weakened workplace safety penalties for smaller businesses, (25) nominated Andrea Lucas as Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) chair, (26) revoked an executive order promoting strong labor standards on projects receiving federal funds, (27) appointed Elisabeth Messenger, the former leader of an anti-union group, to head the Office of Labor-Management Standards, (28) fired EEOC Commissioners Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels, and (29) conducted systematic worksite raids that punished workers rather than improving wages and working conditions.
The president's various "deliberate actions to weaken the federal government" have included (30) politicizing career Senior Executive Service officials, (31) firing most staff at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, (32) nominating Brittany Panuccio as an EEOC commissioner, (33) and picking Project 2025 architect Russell Vought as Office of Management and Budget director.
He has also fired (34) Federal Labor Relations Authority Chair Susan Tsui Grundmann and (35) Merit Systems Protection Board Member Cathy Harris, and (36) tried to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, whose case is set to be argued before the US Supreme Court next week. Trump further (37) fired Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erika McEntarfer over accurate economic data, and is attempting to shut down (38) the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and (39) the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
Additionally, the president (40) directed federal agencies to end the use of disparate impact liability, (41) put independent agencies under his supervision, (42) signed the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that transfers wealth from working families to the ultrarich, (43) proposed a rule that would make it easier to fire federal employees for political reasons, and (44) issued an executive order on apprenticeships that does not require the government to consult with labor groups.
Finally, since returning to the White House, the Republican has (45) gutted the federal workforce, (46) directed US Attorney General Pam Bondi to challenge state laws that would regulate artificial intelligence technologies, and (47) fired 17 inspectors general.
"Trump's actions since taking office a year ago reveal a clear and consistent effort to make life less affordable for working people in order to serve the interests of his billionaire and corporate backers," said report co-author Celine McNicholas, EPI's director of policy and general counsel, in a statement.
"Every dollar denied to typical workers in wages ends up as higher income for business owners and corporate managers," McNicholas added. "This growing inequality is what is making life so unaffordable for workers and their families today."
EPI released the report as the BLS published its consumer price index data for December, which show a 2.7% year-over-year increase in prices for everyday goods and services.
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