President Donald Trump got handed an ugly jobs headline Friday. The economy lost 23,000 payroll jobs in July, and revisions erased another 103,000 jobs from May and June.
Both nonfarm payroll employment (-23,000) and the unemployment rate (4.1 percent) changed little in July, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment declined in local government education and retail trade. Employment continued to trend up in health care. This news release presents statistics from two monthly surveys. The household survey measures labor force status, including unemployment, by demographic characteristics. The establishment survey measures nonfarm employment, hours, and earnings by industry.
For more information about the concepts and statistical methodology used in these two surveys, see the Technical Note. Household Survey Data Both the unemployment rate, at 4.1 percent, and the number of unemployed people, at 6.9 million, changed little in July. These measures also changed little over the year. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for teenagers (12.1 percent) and people who are Hispanic (4.6 percent) declined in July. The jobless rates for adult men (3.9 percent), adult women (3.7 percent), and people who are White (3.6 percent), Black (6.3 percent), or Asian (4.0 percent) showed little or no change over the month.
Among the unemployed, the number of people on temporary layoff increased by 153,000 to 921,000 in July. The number of permanent job losers changed little at 1.7 million. In July, the number of people jobless less than 5 weeks edged down to 2.0 million and is down by 344,000 over the year. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) edged down over the month to 1.8 million but changed little over the year. The long-term unemployed accounted for 25.5 percent of all unemployed people in July.
That can’t be dressed up; a weak jobs report is a weak jobs report.
But buried one line deeper is a number worth noticing. Private employers added 30,000 jobs in July while government payrolls fell by 53,000. If government employment had simply remained flat, the headline number would’ve been a gain of 30,000 jobs.
Statistics can tell very different stories depending on where somebody stops reading. The easiest headline is “23,000 jobs lost.”
It’s accurate, but so is “private employers added 30,000 jobs.”
So is “government employment fell 53,000.”
We deserve all three numbers because together they show what actually happened.
The government decline needs context, too. Of the 53,000 jobs lost, 50,000 came from local government education. Federal employment fell by only 3,000 in July. Giving Trump credit for all 53,000 would be just as misleading as pretending the private-sector gain never happened.
The larger federal trend, however, belongs squarely in Trump’s column. Office of Personnel Management data show the federal workforce has lost 272,283 employees since Trump took office on Jan. 30, 2025.
Hellbound and Down 