When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, many voters figured that because he was a business guy, he must understand the economy.
That was certainly what he himself said, insisting that “I understand money better than anybody,” and “I am going to be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” For good measure, Trump added that “nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world.” Despite a spotty record (at best) on that front in his first term, when he ran again in 2024 with memories of 2022’s burst of inflation fresh in people’s minds, voters turned to him again.
So, one year into his second term, how has Trump performed on the economy? The answer is: not good. Not good at all.
We got the final jobs numbers of 2025 on Friday, and the results were striking. Keep in mind that because the population is always rising, the “breakeven” job creation number of what needs to be added to keep the labor market in the same state is around 150,000 jobs per month. For reference, in 2024, the last year of Joe Biden’s presidency, over two million jobs were created. His four-year total was over 16 million, higher than any other single presidential term in history.
But just 50,000 jobs were added in December, bringing the grand total for 2025 to an abysmal 584,000. Other than the depths of the Great Recession and the covid pandemic, job growth in the first year of Trump’s second term was the worst in over two decades.
While the unemployment rate has not spiked, the job market seems frozen; companies aren’t firing large numbers of workers, but they aren’t hiring large numbers either. Both the number of people working part time who would like to be working full time and the number of people who have been looking for work unsuccessfully for over six months are the highest they have been in a decade. As a result of Trump’s attack on the federal government, 335,000 federal workers were fired or fled. Trump’s immigration crackdown is also holding down job growth.
What else is happening? Consumer confidence continues dropping. In Gallup’s year-end polling, only 21 percent of Americans rated the economy “good” or “excellent.” GDP growth is still healthy, but it’s being propped up by the tech industry’s ungodly spending on data centers. And as Bloomberg recently reported, the share of GDP going to workers in the form of wages and salaries is lower than at any point since data collection began in 1947. Because of Republicans’ unwillingness to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, healthcare premiums are skyrocketing for millions.
