Atranche of economic data released this week has exacerbated fears about the health of the U.S jobs market and the broader economy it underpins.
Until recently, the labor market had been considered in fairly rude health. The White House held up better-than-expected jobs figures from June as evidence that President Donald Trump had unleashed "historic growth and prosperity for our workers." Meanwhile, the minutes of the Federal Reserve's July meeting referred to labor conditions as "solid," a fact that presumably gave it greater confidence in holding off on rate cuts as it grappled with the more pressing issue of "elevated" inflation.
The needle appeared to shift in early August, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the economy added only 73,000 jobs the previous month, far short of the 110,000 analysts had expected. Alongside major revisions to previous months' data, this led Trump to fire the commissioner of the BLS, Erika McEntarfer, whom he accused of tampering with the figures to reflect poorly on him and his administration.
But while McEntarfer has gone—set to be replaced with a more ideologically aligned economist—recent data from the BLS and other organizations have yet to offer evidence of the robust jobs market Trump will be hoping for.
On Friday, it reported that the U.S. economy added 22,000 jobs in August, below the projected 75,000 increase. While July's figures were revised up slightly, June's total was cut by 27,000, dropping from 14,000 to -13,000.
Prior to this, on Wednesday, the BLS reported that job openings in the U.S. had fallen by 176,000 to 7.2 million, the lowest level since September 2024 and well below forecasts of 7.4 million. For the first time since April 2021, job openings are now lower than the total number of unemployed workers—7.4 million, according to Friday's release.
"The decline in open positions is another indication that hiring will remain weak and the job market is soft," Moody's Chief Economist Mark Zandi told Newsweek. "That there are fewer open positions than unemployed for the first time since coming out of the pandemic is a strong tell that the job market is struggling."
"I think the number of unemployed per job opening trending up is significant, and reflects a cooling in the labor market, with lower tightness, which usually leads to lower wages," added economist Ioana Marinescu.
Thursday's data offered little reassurance to those probing for further cracks in the U.S. labor market—one of the economy's main drivers, sustained weakness of which can signal a looming downturn.
Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas revealed that U.S. employers had announced 85,979 job cuts in August. Driven by cuts in the pharmaceutical, financial and technology sectors—though no industry was spared—this marked an increase of 39 percent from July and 13 percent from August of last year. Senior Vice President Andrew Challenger blamed the figures on economic worries among employers, as well as the wave of store closures and bankruptcies that have hit America this year.
Less than an hour later, payroll processing firm ADP reported that private-sector employers had added 54,000 jobs in August, down from 106,000 in July, though an improvement from June, which saw a loss of 23,000 positions.
"The year started with strong job growth," said Chief Economist Nela Richardson, "but that momentum has been whipsawed by uncertainty."
"I think the totality of evidence is increasingly pointing to a slowdown in the labor market that could reflect a recession," Arindrajit Dube, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Newsweek. "I'm concerned about the slowdown in hiring and job openings. The last three jobs numbers for non-farm payrolls have been below 100,000."
"It is difficult to isolate the exact causes of this slowdown," he added, "but it's safe to say that this administration's policies (like tariffs) have not helped."
James Knightley, chief international economist at ING, characterized the current labor market as "cooling, but not collapsing." However, he noted that job data is typically backward-looking, and that more real-time evidence offers little hope of an impending rebound.
According to the University of Michigan's mid-August report on consumer sentiment, the share of consumers expecting unemployment to worsen over the next 12 months stands at around 60 percent, a reading it says was "last seen in the Great Recession."
"People see and feel changes in the jobs market before they show up in the official data—we know if our company has a hiring freeze or the odd person here or there is being laid off," Knightley told Newsweek. "We are currently at levels of sentiment on the jobs market that are consistent with imminent falls in employment."
Newsweek