Over the past three months, U.S. job gains have averaged just 35,000.
“To me, today’s jobs report is what entering a recession looks like,” Josh Bivens, chief economist of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said in a statement.
Trump, on the other hand, during his second term, inherited “unquestionably the strongest economy” in more than two decades, per the Economic Policy Institute, particularly because of the US economy’s rebound compared with peer nations.
For some analysts, the data suggests the economy is on the brink of a recession. “To me, today’s jobs report is what entering a recession looks like,” said Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute. “Could we pull up? Sure. But if we look back and end up dating an official recession that starts 3-6 months from now, this is what it would look like today – rapid softening/deterioration in the labor market.”
“Broad-based tariffs affirmatively shrink the tradeable goods sector of the economy (manufacturing), full stop,” says Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “Tariffs make manufacturing goods (both import and domestic competitors) more expensive and so people buy fewer manufactured goods.”
Firing a nonpartisan analyst for delivering bad news was “straight out of an autocratic playbook,” said Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist of the Labor Department and now the president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center think tank.
“If policymakers and the public can’t trust the data — or suspect the data are being manipulated — confidence collapses and reasonable economic decision-making becomes impossible. It’s like trying to drive a car blindfolded,” she said.
Under federal law, tipped workers are allowed to be paid a much lower minimum wage—just $2.13 per hour compared with $7.25 for nontipped workers. Tipped workers are, consequentially, more likely to live in poverty.
This is the case in Washington, D.C., where, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute, 7.7% of tipped workers live in poverty compared to 2.6% of nontipped workers.
“If policymakers and the public start to doubt the integrity of the numbers, confidence will collapse—creating chaos that will reduce business investment and consumer spending,” Heidi Shierholz, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, told BI.
Research by the Economic Policy Institute shows the financial strain on public schools caused by vouchers. As educators know, when vouchers are enacted, public schools wind up with less funding, leading to larger class sizes and fewer resources such as textbooks, school nurses and counselors, lab equipment, and music and athletic programs.
Despite these safeguards, the profession has become increasingly difficult to fill. According to the Economic Policy Institute, school bus driver employment remains 15 percent below pre-pandemic levels nationwide.
Firing BLS chief is “economically dangerous,” former Labor Department chief economist says
President Donald Trump’s firing of a top Labor Department data official is both a danger to democracy and to the economy, Heidi Shierholz, who served as the agency’s chief economist in the Obama administration, said in a statement.
Shierholz, now president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, called Trump’s removal of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer because he didn’t like the July jobs report “a move straight of an autocratic playbook.”
But it also has serious consequences for the economy, which “runs on reliable data.”