Expectations heading into this week showed projections of about 73,000 new jobs being created in the United States in December. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the totals fell short of those expectations. CNBC News reported:
The U.S. labor market ended 2025 on a soft note, with job creation in December less than expected, according to a report Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 50,000 for the month, lower than the downwardly revised 56,000 in November and short of the Dow Jones estimate for 73,000. At the same time, the unemployment rate fell to 4.4%, compared to the forecast for 4.5%.
The improved jobless rate offers a small silver lining to an otherwise discouraging report, but even this data point needs context: When Donald Trump took office in January, the unemployment rate was 3.7%. In December, it was 4.4%.
Adding to the discouraging news, the manufacturing sector lost 8,000 jobs in December, extending a downturn that lasted much of the year.
As for the larger context, the latest report shows that the U.S. job market added 584,000 jobs in 2025, which might sound like a decent number until you compare it to recent history. In 2024, for example, a year in the Biden administration during which the incumbent president said the economy was terrible, the economy created more than 2 million jobs. A year earlier, the total was almost 2.6 million.
In fact, the job totals for 2025 were easily the worst in the United States since the Great Recession (excluding the job losses from the 2020 pandemic). In fact, in 2010, when the economy was still struggling to recover from a severe economic crisis, the economy generated roughly 1 million jobs.
In the first year of Trump’s second term, the job totals were a little more than half that number.
Last month, as polls showed public support for the Republican’s handling of the economy sinking to embarrassing depths, the president responded with a social media message rooted in pathetic self-pity.
“When will I get credit for having created … perhaps the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country?” Trump wrote. “When will people understand what is happening? When will Polls reflect the Greatness of America at this point in time, and how bad it was just one year ago?” This obviously isn’t the greatest economy in American history; expecting Americans to be grateful for failure is preposterous; and a year ago, the job market was generating far more jobs with a lower unemployment rate. The question for the president and his White House team is simple: If Trump has created “the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country,” why has American job growth slowed to a 16-year low? This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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