GREAT DEPRESSION 2.0?

A dark dispatch from the U.S. job market under Trump: tariffs, chaos economics, and the slow-motion wreck of American work

September 4, 2025

This is the part where the country smiles for the camera while the floor quietly gives way.

America’s jobs report came out today, and there’s only one word to describe the employment State of the Union: DISTASTEROUS.

The latest run of data shows hiring slowing to a crawl, layoffs lining up, and the first hard flip in labor demand that we’ve seen in years: there are now fewer job openings than job seekers. That’s not vibes. That’s the transmission slipping.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is busy “Making America Broke Again”—swinging a wrecking ball of tariffs, political purges, and cosplay economists who treat the economy like a YouTube channel instead of the world’s largest marketplace.

Below is the bleak dashboard, and the ugly through-line that ties it all back to Trump.

The stall: when “low” unemployment stops being comforting

• Hiring has slipped to “stall speed.” Private payroll gains barely rose last month—less than half the month before—and the “official” Friday report is expected to limp in around the 80k range. July already shocked to the downside at +73k, and then came the punchline: spring’s job gains were revised down by roughly a quarter-million. After revisions, the three-month average is ~35k, the slowest pace (outside the 2020 crash) in nearly 15 years.

• Claims are creeping up. First-time unemployment claims just hit an 11-week high, and continuing claims sit near multi-year highs. Translation: losing a job is one thing; finding a new one is getting harder.

• Layoff plans are swelling. Roughly 86k cuts were announced in August—the worst August since the Great Recession (setting aside the pandemic shock). That’s a pipeline you don’t want to see filling.

• Breadth is bad. Job growth is increasingly carried by health care and social assistance. Retail, manufacturing, and parts of business services are flat or negative. A labor market that depends on one or two sectors isn’t “resilient.” It’s brittle.

• Inequality is flashing red. Black unemployment jumped to 7.2%—a near four-year high and often the canary in the coal mine. When the canary starts coughing, miners stop pretending the air is fine.

• Pay can’t keep up with prices. Wage growth is cooling toward the high-3% range just as inflation shows signs of re-warming. That’s a quiet pay cut for most households—and it crushes discretionary spending first.

Put simply: the job market didn’t “soft land.” It fishtailed, and now it’s sliding.

How we got here: Trumpenomics in four destructive moves

Tariffs as a lifestyle

Tariffs are a tax. Slap them on everything, every day, and you jack up costs across supply chains already running on razor margins. Businesses respond the only way they can: delay hiring, freeze capex, push through price hikes, and cut hours. That’s not “tough on China.” That’s tough on you—the worker staring at a shrinking schedule and a bigger grocery bill.

Immigration choke + labor squeeze

A healthy labor market needs a functioning pipeline of workers. Trump’s whiplash immigration clampdowns shrink labor supply just as aging accelerates. Employers don’t hire into unpredictability; they wait. Fewer candidates, higher wage pressures in pockets, and then the tariff squeeze eats the difference. Net result: fewer postings, longer searches, thinner paychecks.

Gutting and politicizing the referees

Agencies exist to keep markets honest and data credible. Trump’s default setting is “wreck it or weaponize it.” He fired the sitting BLS commissioner after July’s weak report and moved to install a Heritage Foundation loyalist to run the jobs data shop—because when the score is bad, change the scorekeeper. He’s done the same across the bureaucracy: purge expertise, install influencers. It’s not governance. It’s grievance with a security clearance.

The “fake economist” cabinet

Remember Peter Navarro—whose spreadsheet fan fiction helped birth a tariff juggernaut and supply-chain chaos? He’s not an outlier; he’s the template. Surround a president with partisans who’ve never had to meet payroll or model second-order effects, and you get an economy run like a talk-radio segment: all certainty, zero calibration, collateral damage everywhere. The new bench of Trump-world “economists” is cut from the same cloth—more culture-war content than actual, workable policy.

The doom loop (how this turns from bad to worse)

• Tariffs lift costs → margins compress.

• Hiring freezes become selective layoffs; hours get shaved.

• Openings fall below the number of unemployed (we’re already there) → job searches lengthen, continuing claims rise.

• Wage growth cools while prices re-heat → real incomes slip.

• Households pull back on spending; businesses see weaker sales → more layoffs.

• Confidence breaks; revisions keep going south; the Fed cuts, but cuts can’t rebuild trust or reverse structural damage from policy chaos.

You don’t need a 1930s breadline to experience a modern crash. You just need enough households to stop spending at the same time—and enough employers to decide tomorrow looks worse than today.

“Is this another Great Depression?”

Not yet. But if the trend continues for another 6-12 months? No Bueno.

The 1930s were a complete systems failure: unemployment above 20%, bank collapses, and a deflationary death spiral. We’re not there. But here’s the point: depressions start as slow slides nobody takes seriously. It’s the compounding that kills you. Month after month of weak hiring, rising layoffs, and souring household finances can turn a “soft patch” into something that feels like a depression for the people living it—especially those at the margins who already drew the short straw.

And this slide is policy-made. Tariffs. Purges. Crony appointments. Viral uncertainty. That’s not bad luck. That’s a plan.

What to watch next (and why it matters)

• Revisions. The last time we blinked, earlier months were revised down by ~250k. If that continues, the “slowdown” we think we’re managing is actually worse in real time.

• Average weekly hours. Employers cut hours before heads; when hours fall, jobs usually follow.

• Black unemployment and prime-age participation. If they keep deteriorating, we’re past “soft patch” and into real damage.

• Claims trend + layoff announcements. If continuing claims break higher and planned cuts keep stacking, the spillover into consumer spending accelerates.

• Breadth. If job growth can’t broaden beyond health care/social assistance, the floor is thinner than it looks.

The bottom line

This isn’t a storm we’re “weathering.” It’s one we’re making. Trump’s tariff-first, data-last, expertise-optional regime is grinding down the gears of the labor market and calling it strength. You can’t bully prices, purge statisticians, cosplay trade wars, and expect families to thrive. You can only Make America Broke Again—one revision, one layoff, one empty job board at a time.

If you want a different trajectory, stop rewarding the chaos and start rewarding competence. The economy isn’t a talking point. It’s your life.