Popular Economics
The job market is shrinking, to no one’s surprise. But July’s catastrophic unemployment report tells us the loss of -23,000 payroll was particularly horrific. Yet +214,000 jobs were created in March, and the economy was perhaps on its way to decent growth this year.
It’s been downhill ever since. More workers are leaving the workforce than are being hired—234,000 left the workforce in July—because companies are leery of Trump’s anti-growth policies.
In fact, the sharp drop in payroll hiring began with Trump’s start of the Iran War, as can be seen in the FRED chart. There may have been other factors, such as higher tariffs and threats to invade other countries as well.
But economies don’t like wars begun with no advance notice or preparation, nor does congress, or employers, or most Americans. Tolerating such an ongoing war tells us that many Americans are now living in a country ruled by almost constant fear, under a president, a convicted felon acting like a mob boss who makes decisions through threats and intimidation, rather than laws and the congress .
Why did this happen? President Roosevelt faced much larger fears that he addressed in his famous 1933 inauguration speech when 25 percent of Americans were unemployed. And even with such fears created the modern social safety net—including social security, union protections, and unemployment insurance—to recover from the Great Depression.
But many of those guarantees have been watered down or eliminated for many Americans since then. We are the only developed country without universal health care, tuition free public college, mandated paid vacations and paid child leave, among other benefits, all major indicators of social well-being.
And Americans suffer from the greatest income inequality in the developed world, engineered by successive conservative governments who have made a concerted effort to roll back President Roosevelt’s New Deal.
They have been so effective, particularly since 1980 and Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economic policies, that many Americans no longer feel safe, have lost faith in democratic government, so have elected to live in an autocracy—particularly in red states ruled by Republicans—in desperate fear of not only losing their vocations, but their health care and retirement pensions, including social security.
Fear is contagious, but as President Roosevelt knew, was faced down when our government reclaimed its role as a public service that protected all Americans, not just the privileged few.
Harlan Green © 2026
Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen
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