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A little something fun from my colleague Adrian before we get started. His reporting in Huddled Masses landed him on the White House’s naughty list. The president’s social media team even made a little video about how much they hate Adrian and The Bulwark (among some other reporters and outlets). They’ve since deleted it, but you can watch it here. It’s great to see our reporting recognized like this. Adrain will be on the beat in 2026, creating some good trouble for the Trump administration’s jackboots thanks to the support we get from Bulwark+ members. Join us to support our work in 2026.
—JVL
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1. Jobs Jobs Jobs
I spent the Biden years tearing my hair out because voters did not care that unemployment stayed under 4 percent for almost his entire administration. Jobs—not prices—have historically been the single most important factor in determining how voters feel about the economy. The Biden economy created jobs like no one’s business.
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In a rational world, voters would have said,
Under Donald Trump the unemployment rate went to almost 15 percent. That’s very bad. Biden brought it down to 3.5 percent and kept it there almost his entire term. That’s very good.
Instead voters said,
The big jump in unemployment under Trump was because of COVID. The natural state of affairs is for the unemployment rate to be at 3.5 percent. So we should treat full employment as given and instead make prices—fully apart from real-dollar wage growth—the sole rubric we use to evaluate the economy. Why should we give Biden credit for jobs? Unemployment is always low.
Well buckle up, motherforkers, because it turns out that the unemployment rate does not just naturally sit at 3.5 percent. A bad president can blow up the economy and cause lots of people to lose their jobs. Which is exactly what this week’s numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed. Let’s tick through the parade of horribles:
When Trump took office, 6.8 million Americans were unemployed. Today that number is 7.8 million.
Per Charles Schwab: “So far in the back half of 2025, the economy has created 113k jobs. In the full history of payroll data, that is (so far) the weakest semi annual gain we’ve seen, excluding the rebound periods after recessions.”
More Schwab: “The U.S. unemployment rate is now up by 1.2 percentage points from its trough 30 months ago. We have never seen that kind of increase without the economy already being in a recession.”
How bad is the jobs market?
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Line goes up!
But here’s the thing: As bad as the unemployment situation looks right now, last week the chairman of the Federal Reserve said that he thinks the real numbers are actually worse. . . ...