We know he trashed the economy....

Job growth slowed markedly in Trump's first year back in office

The slowdown comes even as the economy is rapidly growing and inflation is more muted than many analysts had feared.

By Victoria Guida

The U.S. economy added 584,000 jobs in 2025, the slowest annual growth outside of a recession since 2003, reflecting the low-hire, low-fire labor market conditions that have prevailed during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term.

Employers added 50,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department reported Friday, slightly below expectations, but the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.4 percent. That’s below the 4.5 percent rate reported for November, but joblessness overall has crept up from the 4 percent rate reported in January 2025, when Trump took office again.

The annual employment growth figures are a significant slowdown from 2024, President Joe Biden’s last year in office, when the government estimates that the U.S. added 2 million jobs.

“December’s jobs report closes out 2025 not with fireworks, but with a quiet fizzle,” said Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor. “The labor market started the year running at a solid pace and ended catching its breath. After a year marked by tariffs, shutdown disruptions, and shifting economic currents, today’s numbers show an economy that is still moving along, but undeniably slower than where we began.”

There were net job losses in three months last year, particularly in October, which reflected both buyouts of federal employees spearheaded by DOGE and the government shutdown. The Labor Department said 68,000 more jobs were shed that month than previously estimated, for a total loss of 173,000.

Although the labor market isn’t showing signs of rapid deterioration, the sluggish pace of job growth could further weigh on Americans’ perceptions of the economy, where they are already giving Trump low marks.

The president has rolled out a number of announcements in recent days on ways he plans to address the public’s dissatisfaction with the cost of living.

Still, there have been bright spots for the administration. Economic growth shattered expectations in the third quarter of the year, growing at an annual pace of 4.3 percent, and prices have not risen as much as feared as a result of the president’s sweeping tariff regime.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett also pointed to numbers showing productivity has surged, which he likened to the economic boost brought by the computer age in the 1990s.

Hassett, who is among the top contenders to take over as chair of the Federal Reserve, attributed the job growth slowdown in part to the administration’s crackdown on immigration.

“There have been sort of two things that have reduced the growth of the labor market,” he told CNBC. “One of them is the reduction in federal government employment, precisely, which is down about 250,000 this year. And then the other is the deportation of illegals.”