Two days ago, the American people watched in shock as President Trump’s “Liberation Day” imposed sweeping tariffs, perhaps designed by ChatGPT, on almost everything we import into this country. Today we saw the Bureau of Labor Statistics release a new monthly jobs report. With all of the economic noise over the past 74 days, it can be hard to keep track of what’s happening right now.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends. Although the headline numbers of an additional 228,000 jobs added in March and a steady unemployment rate at 4.2 percent might look good, the economic cracks are showing deeper in the data. While March was the 51st consecutive month of job growth (overall and for women), we might not get to a 52nd with Trump’s anti-worker class tax and tariff policies. Women are already feeling the squeeze. Only 37 percent of the new jobs in March went to women, marking the second month in a row where women gained less than 50 percent of jobs. Additionally, 16,000 women in professional and business services lost their jobs, along with 8,000 women in manufacturing.
These data were collected three weeks ago. While they show a slight decline in the federal workforce (down 4,000 jobs), they don’t fully reflect the chaos in the federal government over the past few months. Since these data were collected, 25,000 probationary public servants were fired, reinstated by a federal judge, and placed on paid leave by the administration, stopping their essential work. Just this week we’ve seen the layoffs of 10,000 vital Health and Human Services workers who protect the nation’s health by researching new cures for Alzheimer’s and ensuring our food is safe and measles doesn’t spread. Make America Healthy Again indeed.
While the unemployment rate is the most important metric for someone looking for work, the employment-population ratio, or the share of the adult population that is working, can be more useful for assessing the health of the economy overall because it’s less affected by seasonal and short-term variations than other metrics and looks at the overall population, not just those actively looking for work. Other economic measures, like the labor force participation rate and the unemployment rate, do not take into account people who are discouraged and drop out of the labor market, but the employment-population ratio looks at everyone. In March it came in at 61.8, down from the 62s of 2023 and 2024 and well below the 63s immediately pre-pandemic.
People working powers our economy, but that’s been steadily declining in the 21st century. While some of this decline is due to an aging population, relatively low rates of participation for prime-age women and disabled people make it clear we have room to grow. And progress for these groups in recent years underscores the importance of policy choices in shaping their labor market possibilities. To ensure economic prosperity for all, policymakers should be focused on building an economy that supports people who want to work, including millions of disabled people and caregivers, through advancing policies like paid leave, child care and long-term supports and services.
Instead of taking up these policies though, co-Presidents Trump and Musk are focused on outlandish tariffs that everyone from JP Morgan to the Federal Reserve to small businesses to individuals know won’t “liberate” us from anything except more of our paychecks into the pockets of billionaires. These tariffs are estimated to increase the price of goods to the tune of almost $4,000 a year per household, and will cause immense harm to millions and slow down our economy, maybe even throwing us into an entirely self-inflicted recession.
Besides hurting our economy, these tariffs will be used to justify more tax cuts for the wealthy, meaning less revenue to pay for expanded healthcare, a national paid family and medical leave program, and affordable housing and child care. Who should we be investing in: 330,000,000+ Americans or 902 billionaires?
