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‘People’s Jobs Report’ From Economic Justice Campaigners Shows Harm of GOP Policies
"Trump stopped the Bureau of Labor Statistics from releasing its monthly jobs report," said one advocate. "But people deserve to know just how bad Trump's economy is."
Oct 03, 2025
With the US government entering the third day of a shutdown Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics didn't release the monthly jobs report as scheduled—but one economic justice group said that even without the official analysis of the labor market, it's clear that President Donald Trump and the Republican Party's policies have "devastated workers and families," with the shutdown making matters worse for millions.
Unrig Our Economy provided its own People's Jobs Report to "fill the gaps" left by Republicans, who have refused to agree to Democrats' demands to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies and reverse Medicaid cuts in a spending bill to keep the government open.
Trump and GOP leaders have falsely claimed that Democrats are demanding "free healthcare" for undocumented immigrants—who are not eligible for government-run healthcare programs like Medicaid. The Democratic Party and experts have warned that the expiration of the ACA subsidies would raise healthcare premiums by 75% for millions of Americans.
Unrig Our Economy noted in its "Jobs Day" report that the expiration of the tax credits could also cost the US economy nearly 300,000 jobs in the next year, including 130,000 jobs lost "because of direct reductions in the provision of hospital, physician, and other ambulatory care as well as reductions in pharmacy-related services."
As the Commonwealth Fund reported in March, 156,000 jobs could be lost next year in sectors including manufacturing, retail, and real estate "as a result of the indirect or induced effects of healthcare funding losses," with rural communities among the hardest-hit areas.
“This ‘People’s Jobs Report’ from Unrig Our Economy shows how destructive Republican policies have been on the economy."
Those projected losses would compound "some of the most alarming economic developments" under the Republican-controlled government, said Unrig Our Economy.
The group cited an ADP report which found that while official statistics can't be reported as long as the BLS is closed, US companies shed an estimated 32,000 jobs in September.
About 13,000 jobs were lost in June, the group noted—the first time the economy lost jobs since 2020. The unemployment rate in last month's BLS report stood at 4.3%—the highest it's been since 2021.
Unemployment claims also rose to nearly 2 million in August—the highest since 2021—while Trump's tariff policies have "caused chaos for employers" including small businesses, where employment has dropped by 26,700 since the president took office for his second term in January.
"In tariff-related industries, payrolls fell by 90,100 jobs, including 42,000 jobs in manufacturing," said Unrig Our Economy. "Wholesale trade jobs fell by more than 26,000 since January and mining and logging jobs fell by 12,000 during the same period."
The group released its report a day after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called on the federal government to move forward with releasing the official jobs report despite the government shut down. Democrats have warned that the Trump administration has kept Americans in the dark about the true state of the economy, including when the president demanded the firing of Erika McEntarfer, who until August was the commissioner of the BLS.
McEntarfer was dismissed after the agency released a jobs report that showed the economy had added only 73,000 jobs in July—data that Trump baselessly claimed had been falsified to harm him politically. Her departure, however, didn't stop the flow of negative news about the economy under Republican leadership; the jobs report released in early September showed only 22,000 jobs created the previous month.
“Donald Trump’s economic agenda is inflicting massive pain on our economy and to add to the economic uncertainty, he’s shut down the government rather than save healthcare for millions of Americans," said Warren on Thursday. "But let’s be clear: The jobs data scheduled to come out this Friday has undoubtedly been collected and the president must release it. Without it, the Federal Reserve will not have the full picture it needs to make decisions this month about interest rates that will impact every family across the country. Donald Trump has the power to make sure the federal government can continue producing and releasing this critical information on Friday and beyond during his shutdown.”
William Beach, a former commissioner of the BLS, said this week that the September jobs data has been collected.
"Trump stopped the Bureau of Labor Statistics from releasing its monthly jobs report because Americans are struggling, and the numbers are disastrous," said Alexandra De Luca of American Bridge 21st Century. "But people deserve to know just how bad Trump's economy is."
A Bloomberg poll of economists found that employers likely added 53,000 jobs last month—fewer than the average of 64,000 added over the previous six months—and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimated that the unemployment rate has remained at 4.3%.
“Working people deserve a government that lowers their healthcare costs and creates good-paying jobs,” said Leor Tal, Unrig Our Economy campaign director Leor Tal. “This People’s Jobs Report from Unrig Our Economy shows how destructive Republican policies have been on the economy. Not only are Republicans in Congress tanking the economy by raising costs on families and cutting essential programs that help them make ends meet, but they’re destroying jobs too—all while giving billionaires massive tax breaks.”
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Trump Admin Responds to Milei’s Failed Libertarian Policies With a US Taxpayer Bailout for Argentina
"Milei was already gifted a $42 billion lifeline from the US-controlled IMF and the World Bank," said one economics writer, "but even that was not enough to stabilize Milei's crazy Austrian School experiment."
Sep 23, 2025
In his first meeting with a foreign head of state after being reelected president last year, Donald Trump welcomed Argentina's far-right libertarian President Javier Milei to Mar-a-Lago.
At a lavish gala, Argentina's president slathered his host with compliments, describing Trump's return to office as the "greatest political comeback in history."
Before a crowd of onlookers, Trump would return the favor, telling Milei, "The job you’ve done is incredible. Make Argentina Great Again, you know, MAGA. He’s a MAGA person.”
On Monday, less than a year later, Milei arrived in New York for this week's meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, begging for help as Argentina's economy continues its freefall and reels from nearly two years of his radical economic austerity program.
Milei's fealty to Trump bore fruit. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promised that the nation's financial department "stands ready to do what is needed within its mandate to support Argentina."
In what he described as an effort to tame Argentina's runaway inflation, Milei, who has described himself as an "anarcho capitalist," has spent the time since he was elected president in 2023 instituting a brutal regime of what has been referred to as economic "shock therapy."
His agenda has centered on taking a "chainsaw" to government institutions and worker protections: slashing energy and transportation subsidies, halting public infrastructure projects, declaring war on labor unions, freezing wage and pension increases, and firing tens of thousands of government employees.
The result was predictable: By February 2025, the country had begun to rapidly deindustrialize, unemployment was soaring, and more than half of Argentinians lived in poverty.
However, this did not stop Trump from modeling his economic agenda, often explicitly, after Milei's—most notably through the exploits of the chainsaw-brandishing billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which he used to lay waste to the administrative state. Trump, meanwhile, has signed legislation gutting social services like Medicaid and food assistance, busted public unions, and canceled numerous green energy and infrastructure contracts.
The result has likewise been a slump in economic activity, culminating in unemployment numbers critics say the administration has been desperate to bury.
The US president has already intervened once to help soften Argentina's landing. As El País notes:
Thanks to Trump’s political support, the government agreed to a $20 billion bailout with the International Monetary Fund last April—to which the country still owes another $40 billion—and achieved a measure of calm, but it lasted barely three months.
Now, with Milei facing mass street protests against his budget cut proposals, a hostile legislature that routinely vetoes his agenda, and a weakening peso in the face of continued uncertainty, he has turned to the US for another bailout, which the US hopes will help ease the country's economic woes enough to stave off a thrashing for his party in the country's general legislative elections on October 26.
Referring to Argentina as a "systemically important US ally in Latin America," Bessent said that "all options for stabilization are on the table." This, he said, "may include, but [is] not limited to, swap lines, direct currency purchases, and purchases of US dollar-denominated government debt from Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund."
Notably, Bessent continued to praise Milei's "support for fiscal discipline and pro-growth reforms." Despite its catastrophic effects, he described Milei's chainsaw agenda as "necessary to break Argentina’s long history of decline."
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) denounced the bailout as another favor from Trump to one of his political allies.
"First, Trump made us pay higher coffee and beef prices to support a convicted coup-plotter in Brazil," she said, referring to Trump's attempt to use harsh tariffs to pressure the Brazilian government into dropping charges against Jair Bolsonaro, who was ultimately convicted last week of attempting to overthrow the government. "Now, he wants American taxpayers to bail out his friend Milei in Argentina."
(Video: The Geopolitical Economy Report)
But as Benjamin Norton of the Geopolitical Economy Report argues, the motivation goes deeper than simply helping out a friend. It is an effort to save the reputation of "actually existing libertarianism" and the fortunes of US investors who've cast their lot with him.
"Milei was already gifted a $42 billion lifeline from the US-controlled IMF and the World Bank (after Argentina already owed more debt to the IMF than any other country), but even that was not enough to stabilize Milei's crazy Austrian School experiment," Norton said. "The US government is doing this not only to prop up one of its most loyal puppets in Latin America, but also in order to benefit wealthy US investors who hold Argentine stocks and bonds, and US corporations that want Argentina's lithium."
With Trump having modeled his oligarch-friendly economic agenda on Milei's, journalist Jacob Silverman—author of the forthcoming book Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley—argued that allowing the libertarian radical to twist in the wind is not an option for Trump.
"Javier Milei can't be allowed to fail," Silverman said, "because MAGA leaders and the tech right have propped him up as a true libertarian fighting the globalists and 'doing what needs to be done': Immiserating his people on behalf of private capital."
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Expert Warns Small Interest Rate Cut 'Will Do Little to Address Trump's Economic Turmoil'
"Trump promised to lower prices on day one and be 'the champion of the American worker,' yet his economic agenda has delivered higher prices, a stalled job market, and sluggish growth," said another economist.
Sep 17, 2025
As working-class Americans contend with a stalled labor market and rising prices under US President Donald Trump, economist Alex Jacquez warned Wednesday that the Federal Reserve's "small rate cut will do little to address Trump's economic turmoil."
"Driven by a stagnant job market, the Fed's move offers no real relief to American households, consumers, or workers—all of whom are paying the price for Trump's economic mismanagement," said Jacquez, who previously served as a special assistant to former President Barack Obama and is now chief of policy and advocacy at the think tank Groundwork Collaborative. "No interest rate tweak can undo that damage."
Jacquez's colleague Liz Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy at Groundwork, similarly said Wednesday that "President Trump promised to lower prices on day one and be 'the champion of the American worker,' yet his economic agenda has delivered higher prices, a stalled job market, and sluggish growth. He's leaving families and workers high and dry—and no move by the Fed will save them."
The president has been pressuring the US central bank to slash its benchmark interest rate, taking aim at Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump appointed during his first term. Powell remained in the post under former Democratic President Joe Biden.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted to lower the federal funds rate by 0.25 percentage points, from 4.25-4.5% to 4-4.25%. It is the first cut since December 2024, and Powell said the decision reflects a "shift in the balance of risks" to the Fed's dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment.
Daniel Hornung, who held economic policy roles during the Obama and Biden administrations and is now a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, said in a statement that "beyond the Fed's September cut, the main story from the Fed's projections is a cloudy outlook for the economy and monetary policy over the rest of the year."
The cut came after Trump ally Stephen Miran was sworn in to a seat on the Fed's Board of Governors on Tuesday—which made this FOMC gathering "the most politically charged meeting in recent memory," as Politico reported.
The new appointee "was the only Fed official to dissent from the decision," the outlet noted. "Miran called for twice as large a cut in borrowing costs, and the Fed's economic projections suggest that one official—likely Miran—would support jumbo-sized rate cuts at the next two meetings as well—an estimate that is conspicuously lower than the other 18 estimates."
Hornung highlighted that "an equal number of members favor hiking, no further cuts, or one cut to the number of members who favor two more cuts, and one outlier member—presumably, President Trump's current Council of Economic Advisers chair—favors the equivalent of five cuts."
"Besides Miran’s outlier status, which sends concerning signals about continued Fed independence," he added, "the wide range of views on the committee is a reaction to the real risks that tariff and immigration policy pose to both sides of the Fed's mandate."
Federal immigration agents across the United States are working to deliver on Trump's promised mass deportations, despite warnings of the human and economic impacts of rounding up immigrants living and working in the country. The president is also engaged in a global trade war, imposing tariffs that have driven up prices for a range of goods.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced last week that overall inflation rose by 2.9% year-over-year in August and core inflation rose by 3.1%. Jacquez said at the time: "Make no mistake, inflation is accelerating and American families continue to feel price pressures across the board from children's clothing, to groceries, to autos. Rate cuts will not ease the inescapable financial pain that the Trump economy is inflicting on households across the nation."
That came less than a week after BLS revealed in its first jobs report since Trump fired the agency's commissioner that the US economy added only 22,000 jobs in August, and the number of jobs created in July and June were once again revised downward.
Jacquez had called that report "more evidence that Trump’s promises to working families have fallen flat."
Recent polling has also exposed how working people are suffering under Trump's second administration. One survey—conducted by Data for Progress for Groundwork and Protect Borrowers—shows that "American families are trapped in a cycle of debt," with 55% of likely voters reporting at least some credit card debt, and another 18% saying they “had this type of debt in the past, but not anymore.”
The poll, released last week, also found that over half have or previously had car loan or medical debt, more than 40% have or had student debt, and over 35% are or used to be behind on utility payments. Additionally, nearly 30% have or had “buy now, pay later” debt through options such as Afterpay or Klarna.
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