Latest Jobs Report Suggests Tariffs Harming Blue Collar Work, Counter to White House Narrative
On Tuesday morning, we received the latest data indicating that President Donald Trump’s tariff regime is, in fact, failing to make manufacturing great again. The November jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that the tariffs do not protect blue-collar jobs and could well raise prices during the holiday season. And while these facts may not surprise experts or careful observers, the BLS jobs situation report reveals information that runs counter to what Trump and his economic Cabinet members have been feeding the public.
Tuesday’s jobs report appeared to show an economy in continued stagnation or even decline, while sectors particularly sensitive to Trump’s tariffs appeared to be strained, as evidenced by job cuts.
It’s yet another example — similar to Trump’s assertion that Americans’ concerns about “affordability” are the product of a “hoax” — of how the economic reality facing people on the ground is in considerable tension with the narrative developed by the White House.
The economy added 64,000 jobs in November, slightly more than the 50,000 analysts expected from the first near-time jobs report since the six-week government shutdown halted BLS operations. The unemployment rate of 4.6%, however, was higher than expected and higher than the rate at the same time last year.
In fact, Americans have not experienced an unemployment rate of 4.6% since September 2021, when employment was normalizing after the historic economic shock caused by the pandemic. Prior to April 2020, the United States had not seen an unemployment rate of 4.6% since February 2017, according to historical BLS data. The unemployment rate has been rising since June (although data for October does not exist due to the shutdown), the longest period of rising unemployment since 2009 during the global financial crisis. During Trump’s first term, the unemployment rate largely continued to decline, following the downward trend established during former President Barack Obama’s two terms, according to historical BLS data.
In addition to the worrying upward trend in unemployment, the sectors where job losses are concentrated are those that the president and his men have hailed as Trump’s priority.
The number of blue-collar jobs across all sectors declined between October and November, according to the jobs report. Mining and forestry occupations lost 4,000 jobs month over month, and this drop is even greater than the same period last year. The manufacturing sector lost 5,000 jobs and around 80,000 positions year-over-year, including losses at food, textile, clothing, paper and chemical factories.
In October, a White House press release asserted that “America’s manufacturing sector is growing with unprecedented momentum,” before announcing future commitments secured from companies like automakers Whirlpool and Stellantis. The momentum touted by the White House has yet to be felt on the ground, according to Tuesday’s report.
Commerce and transport are two other sectors particularly affected. General merchandise retailers — Walmart, Costcos and Targets — cut about 7,000 jobs, but their numbers were up slightly from last November. And transportation has been hit hard this holiday season, with couriers and messengers seeing double-digit declines.
In a POLITICO Q&A published in early December, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer touted Trump’s trade policies as a revenue driver for blue-collar workers.
“But where trade comes into play is when you have a trade system that protects jobs in the United States, you get higher revenues,” Greer said. “So blue-collar wages are up this year. That’s what matters.”
Federal data released last week also puts an asterisk on that claim. Total compensation for manufacturing workers increased 0.8% for the three months ending in September 2025. But that industry saw exactly the same percentage increase over the same period in 2024 and 2023. Wage growth in transportation and moving materials was down this year compared to the previous two, while construction workers’ pay increases were up slightly, just 0.1% year-over-year. the other.
Construction jobs are increasing, however. The industry added 28,000 jobs month over month and has higher employment numbers than this time last year. Analysts understand that this gain is typically associated with data center construction and other AI-related construction projects. Experts also considered the risks that could arise from having the U.S. economy and construction sector supported so significantly by a single engine.
Business investments in AI-related growth, such as building data centers, boosted U.S. GDP by more than 1% in the second quarter of 2025, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. The industry has been such a boon to the economy that BCA Research chief global strategist Peter Berezin told the Journal it could single-handedly save the United States from an economic crash.
“It’s certainly plausible that the economy is already in recession” without investments in AI, Berezin told the Journal.
Even as the analyzes poured in, Trump officials continued to circle, painting a familiar, disconnected view of the economy.
“The November jobs report shows that our economy continues to gain momentum despite the economic mess that President Trump inherited from the Biden administration and the Democrats’ reckless shutdown,” U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a released statement.
Tuesday’s numbers aren’t the end of the story either. The BLS revised its employment estimates for August and September downward by a total of 33,000, and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at a news conference last week said the Fed believed the BLS numbers could overestimate hiring by about 20,000 jobs per month.
