The February jobs report lagged behind expectations. And who can blame employers for not hiring if they have to deal with Donald Trump's erratic economic policies?
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Just a few days before the election, Donald Trump said that a monthly job growth of 250,000 is “almost automatic” (even though he only hit that target seven times in his first term). By that measure, things aren’t off to a good start.
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the economy added 150,000 jobs in February, Trump’s first full month in office. That’s a bit below expectations (including his own, apparently), but it’s certainly not a disaster.
That’s still to come.
At this point in any article about employment numbers, we usually explain that presidents often have very little to do with month-to-month job creation. The economy is cyclical, and some presidents happen to ride an upswing they were not responsible for while others may be in office during a recession.
The best example is Trump himself. The massive jobs losses during the COVID pandemic were obviously not his fault, and Joe Biden was able to pad his stats significantly by “bringing those jobs back.” But, did he really bring jobs back, or did businesses just reopen? Conversely, Biden was blamed for very high post-pandemic inflation that was a global problem and as much as his fault as the job losses during the shutdown were Trump’s.
However, we will have to add a qualifier to that statement: This rule does not apply when a president puts in place policies that actively harm the economy, like imposing tariffs that make no sense, or laying off the government.
And since Trump is doing both, this may be the best jobs report he is going to see for a bit. For example, this one did not yet reflect all of those civil servants losing their jobs. In February, government employment was up a total of 11,000. While the federal government shed 10,000 jobs, state and local governments hired more.
More than anything, Trump’s erratic policies that are based on a mixture of grievances and ignorance are making it very difficult for businesses to plan. And that uncertainty causes them to batten down the hatches.
While the president does not seem to understand that, one of his biggest cheerleaders at Fox News (which is a very high bar) does. On Friday, Maria Bartiromo interviewed Trump and asked him about the problems that his erratic policies and flip-flops cause.
“I think CEOs want to see predictability,” she said. “They say ‘Look, I’ve got to speak with shareholders, I have to make plans for [capital expenditures], I can’t when [tariffs are] 20 percent one day, and then it’s off for a month, and it’s 25 percent.”
Then, in classic Fox News style, she threw Trump a softball.
“Can you give us a sense of whether or not we are going to get clarity for the business community?”
Trump could not.
“Well, I think so,” he said. “But, you know, the tariffs could go up as time goes by. They may go up. And I don’t know if that’s predictability.”
“So, that’s not clarity,” a somewhat exasperated Bartiromo said.
She is right. The only thing that seems clear is that Trump is just flailing about and has no idea what he is doing or how his policies will affect regular Americans and the world economy.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
