The employment numbers for the month of August were just released, and they are horrible. Sadly, they have now been horrible for several months in a row, and many economists are warning that conditions will get even worse during the months ahead. Other than during the early days of the pandemic in 2020, we haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Recession. If you have a job that you value, hold on to it very tightly, and if you are currently looking for work try to find something as soon as you can before competition for jobs becomes even more intense.
Each month, the U.S. economy must add about 150,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth.
According to the BLS, the U.S. economy only added 22,000 new jobs during the month of August…
U.S. job growth continued to slow down in August, with just 22,000 new jobs—a sign that the labor market is deteriorating markedly.
Friday’s report adds to a summer of slow hiring and points to a stagnant job market that has lengthened job searches, shut young people out of employment and increased unemployment for Black workers.
This number was much worse than most analysts were projecting.
After the report was released, one prominent economist stated that it looks like the U.S. economy is “heading into turbulence without the soft landing achieved”…
“The job market is stalling short of the runway,” said Daniel Zhao, chief economist at jobs site Glassdoor. “The labor market is losing lift, and August’s report, along with downward revisions, suggests we’re heading into turbulence without the soft landing achieved.”
Just like we have seen so many times before, the figure for the month of August will probably end up much lower once it is revised.
So by the time it is all said and done, I expect that the final number for the month of August will actually be negative.
Interestingly, the number for the month of June was just revised down into negative territory…
On Friday, the BLS revised the prior two months’ data, showing that employers shed 13,000 jobs in June, revising the month’s hiring downward by 27,000 fewer jobs. That marks the first monthly decline in hiring since December 2020, when the U.S. was in the midst of an economic crisis caused by the pandemic.
Please read that last sentence again.
Thanks to the birth-death model, it is very difficult for the BLS to actually produce a negative number.
The last time it happened there were lockdowns all over the nation due to the pandemic.
But now the number for June is negative.
That is a huge red flag, and Mark Zandi is suggesting that the U.S. economy may have already entered the next recession…
“It’s clear the job market is struggling,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told Fortune. “The economy is on the edge of recession: In fact, we may already be in one. As more revisions come in, it will probably show that employment is declining in a consistent way.”
Overall, during the first eight months of this year the U.S. economy has added the fewest jobs that we have seen since 2009.
Do you remember 2009?
The Great Recession was a very difficult time.
Would our country be able to handle another downturn of that magnitude?
Personally, I think that it is a really bad sign that our economy continues to bleed manufacturing jobs…
The United States lost 12,000 manufacturing jobs for the month, continuing a downward trend since its most recent peak in February 2023, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
But it is happening.
As I discussed yesterday, the numbers that we are getting are confirming over and over again that the U.S. economy is heading in the wrong direction.
Unfortunately, we are being warned that our problems could soon accelerate even more.
One economist is telling us that “the labor market has headed off a cliff-edge”…
“August’s employment report confirmed that the labor market has headed off a cliff-edge,” Bradley Saunders, North America economist at Capital Economics, said in a Friday research report.
That doesn’t sound good at all.
If you want to look for a silver lining, the good news is that it looks like the Federal Reserve will probably give us a rate cut next month.
One economist is urging the Fed to give us rate cuts in October and December too…
“The Federal Reserve needs to cut interest rates in September and probably October and December, too. The ‘no hiring’ economy is turning to a layoff economy and if that worsens, it will lead to a recession. This needs to be stopped,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said in an email.
Hopefully those rate cuts will actually happen, because we desperately need them.
But cutting rates will not reverse our economic momentum.
And the government numbers are not giving us the full picture.
As I have documented in previous articles, government economic numbers almost always make things look better than they actually are.
I believe that the numbers that we get from private sources are much more accurate. According to a new report that was just released by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of announced job cuts in August was 39 percent higher than it was in July…
U.S.-based employers announced 85,979 job cuts in August, up 39% from the 62,075 announced in July. It is up 13% from the 75,891 announced in the same month last year, according to a report released Thursday from global outplacement and business and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
August’s total was the highest for the month since 2020 when 115,762 job cuts were recorded. After 2020, it is the highest August total since the thick of the Great Recession in 2008, when 88,736 cuts were announced. August marks the sixth time this year that the job cut total surpassed that of the corresponding month one year prior.
Can anyone out there think of a way to make those numbers look good?
Because I can’t.
Overall, the number of announced job cuts in the United States is up 66 percent compared to last year…
So far this year, companies have announced 892,362 job cuts, the highest YTD since 2020 when 1,963,458 were announced. It is up 66% from the 536,421 job cuts announced through the first eight months of last year and is up 17% from the 2024 full year total of 761,358.
That last number totally blew me away.
We still have four months left to go in 2025, and we have already beat last year’s grand total by 17 percent.
Let’s be very honest with ourselves.
We have a major crisis on our hands.
And as bad as things are now, the truth is that they will soon get even worse.
The consequences of decades of incredibly bad decisions are starting to catch up with us in a major way.
Brace yourselves and your families for what is coming next, because the months ahead are not going to be pretty.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.