Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
Additionally, the job report for February 2026 massively disappointed.
During his State of the Union speech on February 24, 2026, Donald Trump said the economy is “roaring like never before.”
He claimed that inflation has plummeted during his second term as president, and he also said that core inflation has hit its lowest level in more than five years.
According to Trading Economics, inflation has indeed gone down during Trump’s second term as president, hitting 2.5% in January 2026. This is significantly higher than the 1.3% core inflation recorded in February 2021, when Joe Biden had taken office after Trump’s first term as president.
2025 did see a five-year low — but it is not the kind of low a president promoting economic prowess wants to see.
Worst job numbers since 2020
In February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the US job numbers for 2025 after receiving additional data.
According to NBC News, the preliminary numbers indicated that the US economy added 584,000 jobs in 2025, but after the revision, that number is now just 181,000.
For comparison, the US economy created 1.46 million jobs in 2024.
According to Fortune, job growth in 2025 is the lowest in the US since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Nightmarish February
After revising the job numbers for January 2026, the final job growth for the first month of 2026 is now set at 126,000, which was far more than economists expected.
The positive trend was short-lived, however, as the job numbers for February, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics late last week, showed a job loss of 92,000 — the second-biggest single-month loss since December 2020, according to data from Trading Economics.
According to CNN, economists expected a net growth of 60,000 jobs in February.
Sources: Trading Economics, NBC News, Fortune, CNN
