The Labor Department on Wednesday fired off a series of tweets claiming the nation is “in the middle of a manufacturing renaissance” and created a meme depicting President Donald Trump as “The Jobfather.”
Naturally, it was in the style of a movie poster for “The Godfather.”
But job growth has essentially stalled since Trump took office ― and those manufacturing jobs that the president and the Labor Department have touted simply have not appeared.
In fact, the country has lost between 75,000 and 100,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump returned to the White House last year.
The unemployment rate, which was 4% when Trump took office, hit 4.2% in June. That was a slight drop from 4.3% the prior month, but even that’s not as positive as it may seem: It appears to be due not to people getting jobs but to them leaving the workforce entirely.
The labor force participation rate ― a measure of people actively seeking jobs ― fell to 61.5% in June, the lowest rate since March 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still keeping many people home.
Not counting the pandemic, it’s the lowest labor force participation rate since 1976, according to CNBC.
Given that reality, the president’s critics hit back on X: