Letter to the editor: Trump's historically bad jobs record

First published in the Brunswick Beacon, 03.19.26

Trump’s tariffs are costing jobs. February’s jobs report showed 92,000 jobs lost and revised January and December downward by another 69,000. Fox News called them “massive job losses.” Markets plummeted, putting an exclamation point on Trump’s disastrous jobs record one year into his second term.

“Well, that was ugly,” wrote Bankrate’s Mark Hamrick. How ugly? The Federal Reserve says the economy needs about 153,000 new jobs each month just to keep pace with population growth.

In 2017, Trump inherited a booming economy from Obama, who delivered the longest streak of consecutive monthly job growth by a single president — 75 months. The pandemic left Trump’s first term with a net loss of 57,000 jobs. Covid-19 wasn’t Trump’s fault, so we’ll give him a pass and focus on his second term.

In 2025, Trump again inherited a booming economy from a Democratic president — Biden is the only president to add jobs every month of his presidency. The Wall Street Journal called Biden’s economy the “envy of the world.”

Biden averaged 336,250 jobs per month. Some say we shouldn’t include jobs regained after the pandemic. Others credit Biden’s stimulus programs for the rebound.

Let’s be conservative. After the economy recovered all pandemic job losses in August 2022, Biden still added another 3.5 million jobs — about 216,000 per month — during the rest of his presidency. That’s 14 times Trump’s current pace. Since January 2025, Trump has averaged just 15,000 jobs per month — about one-tenth what the economy needs to break even. The trend has worsened since Trump imposed tariffs last April, with the economy losing 19,000 jobs.

Trump took Biden’s strong economy and wrecked it. Biden handed Trump an unemployment rate of 4% — it’s now 4.4% and rising. One year into his second term, Trump posted the weakest first-year job growth of any president who did not inherit a recession since Franklin Roosevelt took office in the depths of the Great Depression.

Bob Bannerman

Supply