Democrats on Capitol Hill are hammering President Trump and his GOP allies for Friday’s underwhelming jobs report.
Released by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the analysis revealed that U.S. employers added 73,000 jobs in July — well below economists’ estimates of 100,000 — while the figures for May and June were revised dramatically downward to indicate that the economy created 258,000 fewer jobs over those months than initially reported.
The Democrats say the disappointing numbers are no accident but reflect a Republican policy agenda — including Trump’s efforts to gut the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — that has prioritized the financial well-being of the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
“This is really bad,” Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.), a member of the Financial Services Committee, wrote on social platform X. “The job slow down obviously, but the size of the revisions is maybe more ominous in light of all the DOGE cuts to BLS and other economic reporting agencies.
“If this volatility is the new normal we are stapling a huge risk premium on the US economy.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) piled on, pinning the hiring stall directly on Trump’s policies, including on-again, off-again tariffs that have destabilized global trade and created uncertainty for domestic businesses.
“Unsurprising bad jobs report. Just 73,000 added in July, and most of those were health care,” Murphy posted on X. “Even worse, May and June jobs numbers revised down by 258,000. Awful. Companies don’t want to create jobs in Trump’s chaos economy with weakening rule of law and rampant corruption.”
Trump, a billionaire real-estate mogul, has centered his political career on promises to apply his business successes to Washington. On the campaign trail, he vowed to end pandemic-era inflation on “Day 1” and adopt economic policies that would launch a manufacturing “renaissance” across America.
“We will take other countries’ jobs,” Trump said during a campaign speech in Savannah, Ga., last September. “We’re going to take their factories.”
Trump’s Republican allies have portrayed the president as an economic visionary, hailing his policy agenda as a liberating force that’s cutting taxes for consumers and red tape for businesses. They did not change their tune after Friday’s jobs numbers were released.
“This week, we saw how the Trump economy is firing on all cylinders: strong economic growth, better trade deals, wages outpacing price increases, tamed inflation, and now, a job market that keeps going,” Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), the chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, said Friday morning in a statement.
Smith praised Trump for fueling job creation in the private sector, rather than in the government.
“Unlike during the Biden Administration, when taxpayers were forced to pay for millions of new bureaucrats while watching their grocery and gas bills skyrocket, President Trump’s economy is freeing the private sector to create new jobs with more financial security for American families,” Smith said.
Yet Friday’s new labor report also suggests that the economic uncertainty surrounding Trump’s erratic global trade policies is undermining the confidence of private employers to make new hires. It also suggests that the Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill,” which Trump signed into law on July 4, has not alleviated those jitters.
The analysis revealed that job growth in May, June and July was at its lowest level since COVID-19 led to a firing spree in 2020 — a statistic that was not overlooked by Trump’s Democratic critics, who are bashing the president for what they view as broken promises to voters.
“A July jobs report way below expectations. May and June revised down as well. Unemployment rate ticked back up to 4.2%. We haven’t seen conditions like these since 2020,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) posted on X.
“Don’t let Donald Trump gaslight you. He is failing Americans and crashing our economy.”
