2025 was a dismal year for jobs |
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on February 11. | Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
The latest US jobs report came out yesterday, and it paints a mixed picture. In the Vox employee Slack, senior editor Benjy Sarlin explained it to us as a bit of a “both/and” situation: The very latest numbers, for last month, came in higher than economists expected — and job growth over the past year was dismal.
Those simultaneous realities help underscore the strangeness of our current economic moment. While the economy is growing overall, that prosperity isn’t felt by most ordinary people. Hiring remains lackluster-to-fine, as this latest jobs report shows. Economic gains flow overwhelmingly to businesses and shareholders, not workers. Affordability, meanwhile, ranks among most Americans’ biggest policy concerns.
On Tuesday, a striking new Gallup poll found that optimism has cratered to record lows among US adults: Today, four in 10 people believe their life will be worse in five years than it is now.
Those diverging narratives — the pessimism and anxiety workers feel, on one hand, and the top-line expansion on the other — say a lot about the true state of the economy under President Donald Trump. Incidentally, his administration is trumpeting the latest jobs report as a “blockbuster,........