President Donald Trump got handed an ugly jobs headline Friday. The economy lost 23,000 payroll jobs in July, and revisions erased another 103,000 jobs from May and June.
Both nonfarm payroll employment (-23,000) and the unemployment rate (4.1 percent) changed little in July, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment declined in local government education and retail trade. Employment continued to trend up in health care. This news release presents statistics from two monthly surveys. The household survey measures labor force status, including unemployment, by demographic characteristics. The establishment survey measures nonfarm employment, hours, and earnings by industry.
For more information about the concepts and statistical methodology used in these two surveys, see the Technical Note. Household Survey Data Both the unemployment rate, at 4.1 percent, and the number of unemployed people, at 6.9 million, changed little in July. These measures also changed little over the year. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for teenagers (12.1 percent) and people who are Hispanic (4.6 percent) declined in July. The jobless rates for adult men (3.9 percent), adult women (3.7 percent), and people who are White (3.6 percent), Black (6.3 percent), or Asian (4.0 percent) showed little or no change over the month.
Among the unemployed, the number of people on temporary layoff increased by 153,000 to 921,000 in July. The number of permanent job losers changed little at 1.7 million. In July, the number of people jobless less than 5 weeks edged down to 2.0 million and is down by 344,000 over the year. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) edged down over the month to 1.8 million but changed little over the year. The long-term unemployed accounted for 25.5 percent of all unemployed people in July.
That can't be dressed up; a weak jobs report is a weak jobs report.
But buried one line deeper is a number worth noticing. Private employers added 30,000 jobs in July while government payrolls fell by 53,000. If government employment had simply remained flat, the headline number would've been a gain of 30,000 jobs.
Statistics can tell very different stories depending on where somebody stops reading. The easiest headline is "23,000 jobs lost."
It's accurate, but so is "private employers added 30,000 jobs."
So is "government employment fell 53,000."
We deserve all three numbers because together they show what actually happened.
The government decline needs context, too. Of the 53,000 jobs lost, 50,000 came from local government education. Federal employment fell by only 3,000 in July. Giving Trump credit for all 53,000 would be just as misleading as pretending the private-sector gain never happened.
The larger federal trend, however, belongs squarely in Trump's column. Office of Personnel Management data show the federal workforce has lost 272,283 employees since Trump took office on Jan. 30, 2025.
Since FY 2015, the size of the federal workforce has shifted unevenly across agencies, reflecting changing priorities and missions. The Department of Veterans Affairs has seen the largest overall growth during that time period while agencies like the Social Security Administration, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Health and Human Services have seen net decreases. All agencies saw a net decrease with the workforce reductions in FY 2025.
Personnel actions are the official records of changes in a federal employee’s status, such as hiring, promotion, reassignment, resignation, retirement, or termination and are documented using Standard Form 50 (SF-50). Personnel actions are grouped into accessions (individuals entering federal service) and separations (individuals leaving federal service).
The Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) was introduced in 2025 as a new separation option for federal employees. Through the DRP, individuals agreed to separate from federal service by September 30, 2025 (or up to December 31, 2025 if retirement eligible) while receiving full pay and benefits during a period of paid administrative leave.
Additional DRP actions are expected to be processed over time as agency-specific DRPs are fully processed.
His administration imposed a hiring freeze, encouraged early retirement, pursued reductions in force, and offered deferred resignations as part of a deliberate effort to shrink Washington.
For decades, politicians have promised smaller government the way some people promise to start exercising Monday. Washington usually survives the speech and hires somebody else by Tuesday.
Trump's administration has actually reduced the federal headcount by hundreds of thousands.
A Democrat once supplied the slogan.
During his 1996 State of the Union address, then-President Bill Clinton told Congress, "The era of big government is over."
His own party platform repeated the message later that year, declaring that "big bureaucracies and Washington solutions" weren't the answer.
Thirty years later, those words sound almost foreign to the political left. The Democratic Socialists of America promote expanded public services and collective ownership of major industries and have championed a federal jobs guarantee built through the public sector.
Trump is moving in the other direction. Fewer federal employees won't resolve every economic problem, and July's private-sector gain of 30,000 was far too small for a country our size. The report also showed labor-force participation at just 61.4%, while wages rose 3.2% over the past year.
Still, shrinking government while private employers add workers is hardly the economic disaster one headline number might suggest. Washington has spent generations growing almost regardless of which party controlled it.
Watching part of that machinery finally get smaller ought to count for something.
Bill Clinton said big government's era was over.
Trump appears determined to make him look prophetic.
Washington’s political class won’t tell you everything you need to know, and neither will a headline built for clicks. PJ Media VIP gives you the context, analysis, and perspective the establishment would rather skip. Join today and get 60% off with promo code FIGHT.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member