Live updates: Trump responds to bad jobs report by firing BLS commissioner; Markets plunge
Stock markets plunged Friday after a weak jobs report and major downward revisions to May and June employment figures set off alarm bells about the direction of the U.S. economy.
The U.S. added only 73,000 jobs in July and the unemployment rate stayed flat at 4.2 percent, according to data released Friday by the Labor Department. That was well below the expectations of economists, most of whom projected job gains of at least 100,000 in July.
Job growth in May and June was also far lower than first reported, according to the Labor Department, which shaved 258,000 jobs off of its past two reports. The bad jobs news followed President Trump’s Thursday night announcement of higher tariff rates on dozens of nations that hadn’t yet agreed to trade deals with the U.S., hours before his suspended “reciprocal” tariffs were set to take effect Friday. Those new rates will take effect Aug. 7.
I remember when Trump said, “We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say, ‘Please, please. It’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore, Mr. President, it’s too much.’ And I’ll say, ‘No it isn’t. We have to keep winning. We have to win more!’”
