No More Jobs?

 Popular Economics Weekly

“Consumer confidence inched up in June as falling oil prices in recent weeks provided some relief to consumer inflation fears,” said Dana M Peterson, Chief Economist, The Conference Board. “Consumer appraisals of current business conditions were slightly more positive compared to last month. However, perceptions of the current labor market softened measurably as the percentage of consumers saying jobs were ‘hard to get’ rose to 22.5%, the highest level since January 2021 (22.8%). Conference Board

 

MarketWatch

The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Survey highlighted what was behind the meager total of 57,000 new jobs in June – the fewest in four months. The job market may not recover from the damage the Trump administration has done to the U.S. economy anytime soon.

Some 755,000 worker dropped out of the labor force in June because “jobs are hard to get,” said the Conference Board’s survey.

What's more, job gains in May and April were revised down to a combined 277,000 from a previous 351,000 - 74,000 fewer than previously reported.

Trump’s Iran War disaster is probably the main reason for the job losses because higher energy prices from the Middle East are elevating inflation and slowing down hiring for years to come. Wall Street is hoping the A.I. revolution will boost labor productivity to such an extent that it will tame inflation, but without creating many new jobs.

The other culprit for fewer new jobs? Federal immigration officials have detained more than 10,000 people in the last five days, reports the NYTimes, a major surge that has stemmed from a push within Immigration and Customs Enforcement to increase arrest rates. Immigrants won in the latest SCOTUS rulings that ICE cannot hold them without due process, which might slow down the roundups because it means a bond hearing.

The shrinking labor force will shrink economic growth as well since fewer workers means less will be produced; unless the A.I. delivers on it promises of higher producivity. And that will take years. But that means fewer workers, anyway. There will be more robots, Claude, ChatGPT, Open AI, etc., etc. and a shrinking workforce that pays less taxes to support public policies, social security, Medicare and public debt don’t forget, which is soaring, of course.

Well, many of the new jobs will be in the lower paying healthcare industry — hospitals, doctor's offices, dentists, nursing homes and so forth — that created 47,000 of the 57,000 new U.S. jobs in June.

The big question will be how to support our public policies that serve all Americans in the future (and preserve jobs), rather than more Republican policies that continue to favor the concentration of wealth via A.I. or whatever, driving U.S. ever closer to insolvency.

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

No Relief From Inflation

 Popular Economics Weekly

 “From the same month one year ago, the PCE price index for May increased 4.1 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 3.4 percent from one year ago.”

 

BEA.gov

The Personal Consumption Expenditure Index (PCE), the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge that covers the widest spectrum of price changes, showed no relief in May. In fact, the PCE graph above showed inflation’s steady climb since Trump’s April 2025 Liberation Day (illegal) tariff hikes levied on the rest of the world that must now be repaid.

Refunding the tariffs to importers won’t reduce inflation because the higher import costs were passed on to consumers and producers. It becomes a chain reaction as those costs work through the economy. There are also the distributors, for instance, as well as the retailers and manufacturers’ profits that go into the chain.

The 4.1% annual inflation rate means inflation is now out of control for wholesale prices that go into the finished products as well. This is while Kevin Warsh, the new Fed Chairman, has said he is committed to bringing inflation back down to 2%.

When and how can it be done? We will be living with the likelihood the Fed may have to raise interest rates sometime this year. The Ukraine and Iran wars are creating more product shortages on top of the supply chain shortages caused by the tariffs.

The Ukraine war could be over if Trump had taken Ukraine’s side in the conflict instead of Putin’s. And how will he handle the Iranians who have the U.S. over a barrel (of more than oil) because he must bring down the price of oil-based products as well?

The U.S. economy is growing at 2% in the latest first quarter revision because consumers have kept shopping, but with a terrific toll on their personal savings rate (down to just 3%).

The financial markets have added to the frenzy because of the A.I. spending to expand data centers. There’s more than a little irrational exuberance prevailing, I said last week.

Their actions have raised consumer prices to such a level that they may not come down for years. We know this because the wholesale Producer Price Index (PPI), that measures the price of raw materials going into the finished products rose a whopping 1.1% in May, seasonally adjusted, also the largest rise in more than three years that must work its way through the product chain.

No, inflation is here to stay for a while, producing an immense asset bubble as the U.S. economy advances into the next stage of our industrial revolution. Economists have another term to describe it—creative destruction—that economist John Kenneth Galbraith said was,

“the cyclical process by which the system eliminates the people and institutions which are mentally too vulnerable for useful economic service. Unfortunately the process has larger and less benign effects, including the possibility of painful recession or depression.”

We are in this inflationary mess because of executive actions made on impulse rather than research by a President and advisors who are completely ignorant of  basic economic theory, who has said he likes the inflation and no longer cares about the economy.

Who will be the winners and losers in the A.I. economy to come at a speed that will upend the lives and jobs of the next generations?

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Is This Real Growth?

 Financial FAQs

“Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 1.6 percent in the first quarter of 2026 (January, February, and March), according to the second estimate released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Real GDP was revised down 0.4 percentage point from the advance estimate, primarily reflecting downward revisions to investment and consumer spending.” BEA.gov

FRED/Q1gdp

Economic growth this year is improving because corporations are making record profits—up 17 percent annually in Q1 2026 from an average 13 percent since the COVID-19 pandemic.

But it looks like much of the growth may be part of the tech bubble—such as massive overinvestments in chips and artificial intelligence (AI)—creating a bubble which by definition and past history will eventually deflate.

Why the sudden jump in corporate profits to 17 percent? It’s mostly from investing in the massive buildout of artificial intelligence centers and the infrastructure. How long can such GDP growth continue, especially if those future investments, such as in AI programs or the chips that power AI, may take years to turn a profit?

Republicans’ Big Beautiful Tax Cut Bill encouraged corporations to invest as much as possible this year because they could write it off in the same year, and those investments are generating serious profits in the buildout of AI data centers, for starters.

But the Biden administration’s $5trillion in investments to modernize the American economy—the CHIPS, Infrastructure, and Inflation Reduction Acts—are also contributing to the surge in growth.

Yet largely because of the Trump Administration’s mismanagement; even attempts to cancel or impede many of the Biden administration programs that would actually improve inflation, healthcare, environmental protection, and bring the manufacture of computer chips home; we are seeing those profits going into irrationally exuberant, overinvestment in future technologies with uncertain futures instead that is pushing major stocks and market indexes to record highs.

The announcements on the possibilities of AI are mind boggling. Zack Kass, Open AI pioneer and author of bestseller, The Next RENAISSANCE: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential, has said:

“If directed wisely, it will secure our needs, accelerate discoveries that serve human flourishing and unlike the products that commoditize our attention today, free us to invest in connections creativity and love.”

It will free whom, and what will they do then? It is causing massive layoffs at the likes of Amazon (30,000 employees to date) who hope that programs like Claude and ChatGPT can do much of the thinking and future planning for these corporations.

Consumers aren’t doing so well that actually make up most of the GDP growth equation. Their so-called Disposable Income (an economic term) declined to “slightly less than -0.1%” in April.

It resulted in a lowering of the personal savings rate to almost 2%, one-half of its more normal 3-4 percent rate in recent years. Consumers are stretched in other words; more than half of their incomes are now spent on the soaring costs of gasoline/energy products, household necessities, and food. This is another reason we may see slowing GDP growth ahead.

There is no question that AI has enormous potential for good, in what British economist JM Keynes made in a famous prediction in 1930, should there not be too many bumps in the promised road to a greater freedom from work:

“Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.” JM Keynes

But Keynes said this in 1930. How long has it been since then?

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Biden vs. Trump Presidency

 Popular Economics Weekly

“The Producer Price Index for final demand increased 1.4 percent in April, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Final demand prices advanced 0.7 percent in March and 0.6 percent in February. The April increase is the largest advance since rising 1.7 percent in March 2022.” BLS.gov

FREDppi

Trump’s economy vs. Biden’s? It’s no contest. Trump made his major reelection campaign about attacking Biden’s inflation problem, yet the latest wholesale and retail inflation data show President Biden has easily won the inflation battle, as well as that for job creation and economic growth.

The retail Consumer Price Index is the highest in three years, and the wholesale Producer Price Index pictured above is now the highest in four years on Trump’s watch.

There’s no contest with job creation and economic growth as well. A total 234,000 payrolls jobs were added in December 2024, Biden’s last month in office; more than the 181,000 jobs that were created in all of Trump’s first year.

That’s because of Trump’s mismanagement of the illegal tariff war on the rest of the world, the 43-day government shutdown over Obama insurance subsidies (longest in history) that temporally laid off millions of workers and the immigrant deportations.

The illegal tariffs began the inflation surge we are seeing today in import prices. “The 12-month rise in U.S. import prices was the largest over-the-year advance since the index increased 4.2 percent for the year ended October 2022,” per the BLS.

This will also make it even more difficult to lower interest rates in 2026 for the Federal Reserve under new Republican Chairman Kevin Warsh. In fact, the Fed may have to raise their rates if inflation continues to rise and becomes unmanageable as happened during Biden’s term.

That’s because we are not yet accounting for the damage from the Iran war that is elevating prices for all the petroleum byproducts important for jobs and economic growth that are sure to seep into the inflation numbers.

Even if the Iran war is settled soon, predictions are it may take at least one year for a return to normal traffic in the Gulf and Hurmuz Strait that supplies at least 20 percent of the world’s petroleum.

The damage to jobs and economic growth in Trump’s first year shows the extremes to which Republicans will go to ignore basic economic principles (e.g., tariffs are a tax on consumers and producers) to protect their tax cuts.

Even higher inflation is sure to follow. The energy sector is already being hit with higher gas and diesel prices The AI buildout will increase the demand for electricity as the huge AI energy generation centers kick in from the $billions being invested, while Trump continues to cancel more alternative energy solar and wind projects that provide cheaper electricity.

From the start of the Biden presidency through December 2024, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recorded an increase of about 16.1 million jobs, the highest total during a presidential term in history, equal to 336,000 per month (my emphasis).

And economic growth averaged more than 3 percent during his four years because of bipartisan plans to modernize the American economy.

What happened on Trump’s watch? Republicans have paid the economic price for refusing to compromise. America’s electorate came to believe that Republicans knew more about economic growth and what it takes to lower everyday prices for Americans.

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Does Inflation Ever Come Down?

Popular Economics Weekly

“From the preceding month, the PCE price index for March increased 0.7 percent. From the same month one year ago, the PCE price index for March increased 3.5 percent.” BEA.gov

FREDpce

Inflation is rising again, to no one’s surprise, from its low of 2.3 percent in April 2025 when Trump first announced his worldwide tariff hikes, to 3.5 percent in March this year. The reasons are clear, inflation is rising on Trump’s watch, not Biden’s.

And inflation almost never comes down without another recession. This is verified in the above graph of Federal Reserve’s preferred Personal Consumption Expenditure price index from 1980. The gray bars are the five recessions since 1980, and each clearly shows the beginning of the sharp downward move of prices in the PCE index

The only time prices have come down without a recession since then was during President Biden’s term—from its high in June 2022 to slightly above 3 percent at the end of his term.

Biden could do this because the Fed used its best tool to combat inflation; raising interest rates at the same time as Biden succeeded in lowering the federal debt by raising corporate taxes to counter the huge influx of government money injected into the economy ($5 trillion) from Biden’s bipartisan Infrastructure, Inflation Reduction and CHIPS Acts.

The bills were passed to inaugurate the biggest modernization of the U.S. economy since the Great Depression that employed a record number of workers.

So it is possible to bring down inflation without a recession. And there is substantial harm, especially to working Americans who face higher prices for basic necessities, such as gas and healthcare, for prolonging this inflation surge.

What had caused the five recessions since 1980? Republican administrations cut taxes without paying for them, ballooning the federal debt instead of reducing it. Recessions (gray bars) occurred in 1980, 1981, 1990, 2008-09, all during Republican administrations. The short 2000 recession happened because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is an unnecessary inflation surge, in other words. It’s because of multiple wars being fought and a Republican congress that will not curb a president who doesn’t care about the costs and harm he is doing to Americans and the American economy.

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

A Better World is Possible

 

Popular Economics Weekly

"Today we won because the Hungarian people didn't ask what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country," Prime Minister Peter Magyar

NPR

I never thought I would see the most famous line from President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s 1960 inauguration speech be adopted by another head of state, much less by a Kennedy look-alike of about the same age (45 years vs. JFK’s 43 years).

In a victory speech delivered to jubilant supporters on the banks of the Danube River, Magyar reiterated his promises to rebuild Hungary's ties with the European Union and NATO, root out corruption and cronyism and "restore the system of checks and balances," reported NPR.

Peter Magyar had just defeated Victor Orban, Hungary’s 16-year Prime Minister by a landslide, who was leader of the world’s so-called ‘illiberal’ democracies. Why did Orban lose, according to most commentators? It was the economy, “fueled largely by concerns about entrenched government corruption,” said NPR

Hungary had become the poorest member of the European Union with an inflation rate twice that of the EU average, and plunging economy growth.

“Hungary is the most corrupt state in the European Union, according to Transparency International, an organization that aims to combat corruption. The EU has blocked billions in funding to Orbán's government for its alleged assault on the bloc's principles of democracy and equality,” said NPR

So much for one-man rule. It’s a fact that other countries ruled by such autocrats are suffering the same fate as Hungary, such as Russia and Turkey, who had been suffering from slow growth and double-digit inflation for decades.

Why? Such rulers think they know better than the experts. President Trump’s playbook followed that of Orban with U.S. economic growth also plunging of late—mainly because of his Iran war that has shut down petroleum production in the Middle East. Who knows what’s to come?

The Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow estimate of first quarter (Q1) 2026 economic growth widely followed by economists has plunged from its high of 3 percent, where it had been sitting since January 2026, to 1.3 percent in the latest revision, I reported last week.

The cult-like glorification and rampant corruption of President Trump that is harming the U.S. economy is almost a photocopy of Orban’s rule—tearing down the White House East Wing for a ballroom, wanting an Arc de Triomphe, family and son-in-law being enriched by Middle East rulers, his Bit-coin ventures (with World Liberty Financial, founded in September 2024 with the Trump family owning 75 percent), per The Nation, pardoning literally thousands of convicted felons, including convicted drug kings, and most of all extorting wealth from institutions and Robber Baron’s alike in return for special treatment.

Let us hope Hungary’s new Prime Minister can follow the path of President Kennedy, who concluded his inauguration speech with a plea to the rest of the world: “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of mankind.”

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Why Make America Weak?

 

Financial FAQs

“This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Franklin Delano Rooselvelt

theguardian.com

The Democrat’s election sweep on November 2 is proving that American voters  heeded President Roosevelt’s famous warning at his first inaugural address, that the Democrats' paralysis after the loss to Trump II is over and fear, the greatest enemy of Democracy, can be conquered.

The November 2 elections showed just how illusory were those fears that Donald Trump and Republicans wanted Americans to believe, that the largest, most prosperous country in the world had grown weak. Americans were now in danger and only he and his oligarchs could save US.

In fact, Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been attempting to weaken everything that makes America the oldest constitutional democracy since his first day in office.

He began by slashing of essential government services via Elon Musk’s DOGE computer hackers (such as social security, Medicare, Medicare) that benefit all Americans, the attempt to eliminate the the Department of Education that supports our basic universal K-12 and early childhood educational systems, while picking the most unqualified to run the FBI, Department of Homeland Services, and Health and Human Services so that they are no longer fully functional. 

The brutal roundup of undocumented immigrants, whether they have a criminal record, are decimating the ranks of workers that fill agricultural, manufacturing, and service sector jobs needed to maintain economic growth.

The biggest financial threat to ordinary Americans are the rising prices on basic necessities that most Americans depend on due to tariff rates now at Great Depression levels, impoverishing the majority of Americans that live from paycheck-to-paycheck.

It’s become obvious that the Trump administration’s intent has been to instill as much fear as possible in the most vulnerable Americans that the federal government won’t work for them and only Trump and his oligarchs can same them.

But the recent election and huge protests at the last No Kings rallies are a sign that millions of Americans haven’t been cowed or paralyzed.

In fact, they have said, as did Howard Beale, the News Anchor in the movie Network, “I’m as mad as hell and not going to take this anymore!”

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen