'A hiring recession': Trump's tariffs devastate job market

The unemployment rate rose to 4.6%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Tuesday, the highest level since September 2021 when the economy was still recovering from massive COVID-19 job losses.

The 4.6% unemployment rate is higher than the 4.5% the Federal Reserve Bank predicted it would peak at this year, and marks yet another troubling sign for the economy that President Donald Trump has crippled with his nonsensical tariffs.

The unemployment rate is worse for specific subsets of the population. Black workers have an 8.3% unemployment rate—a whopping 2 percentage point increase since January, when Trump entered office. Roughly 800,000 fewer Black workers were employed in November than they were in November a year prior.

No sugar-coating it: Daily Kos needs your help. Can you chip in $5 today?

Ultimately, the economy added just 64,000 jobs since September. However, the economy lost 105,000 jobs one month prior, meaning job growth was actually negative over the last two months.

“The US economy is in a hiring recession,” Heather Long, chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote in a post on X. “Almost no jobs have been added since April. Wage gains are slowing. 710,000 more people are unemployed now versus November 2024.”

Long blamed the hiring recession on “a combination of tariff impacts, AI, and cost cutting.Americans are feeling it.” 

Even worse is that the BLS said nearly 1 million people are underemployed, working part-time jobs for economic reasons because they cannot find full-time work.

With a jobs report like this, it's no wonder Americans have negative feelings about the economy.

Layoffs have picked up in recent months, as companies contract due in part to Trump’s tariffs and the economic uncertainty they’ve unleashed. And prices are continuing to trend up, no matter how much Trump wants to claim that he’s brought costs down.

No billionaire backers, no paywalls. Daily Kos news exists because of YOU, our small-donor community. Now, we need your help. Please donate today.

It’s why Trump’s approval rating has plummeted over the past month, with voters voicing their discontent in a series of elections in which Democrats vastly overperformed their 2024 margins and even flipped seats that had been long held by the GOP.

Republicans have begged Trump to take the economic concerns seriously.

However, Trump has not heeded their calls, instead telling Americans they should simply buy fewer items if they can’t afford them.

“You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils. That’s under the China policy, you know every child can get 37 pencils—they only need one or two, you know they don’t need that many,” Trump said, adding, “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter, two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls.”

Click here to check out this story on DailyKos.com.

We're not asking for much

The average donation to Daily Kos has been just $9.44. These donations may seem small, but they're a big deal to us. In fact, they are our largest source of income. We literally couldn't do the work we do without them. Can you join thousands of other Daily Kos readers and help us with a donation of $9.44 right now?