The U.S. labor market just offered the first major reality check on President Donald Trump‘s tariff-driven economic uncertainty—and it’s not the message investors or the White House were hoping for.
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Friday’s official July jobs report revealed a sharp hiring slowdown, a rise in unemployment, and deep downward revisions to past data that flipped solid gains into significant disappointments.
The only bright spot: wages are still holding up.
July Hiring Disappoints; May, June Numbers Crash
Nonfarm payrolls rose by just 73,000 in July, far below the 110,000 expected by economists. The private sector added 83,000 jobs, while government employment contracted by 10,000.
Yet the biggest surprise wasn’t July’s soft print—it was the massive downward revisions to previous months.
May’s job growth was slashed from 144,000 to 19,000, while June was revised from 147,000 to just 14,000.
These revisions made both May and June the worst months for employment growth since December 2020.
That’s a combined 258,000 jobs wiped from earlier estimates, highlighting the …