US economy unexpectedly sheds 92k jobs in February

gigatexal

What a favorable headline. In reality everyone knows why the economy isn’t growing: Trump’s policies are paradoxically anti business given his public persona of this big bad amazing businessman. The guy failed at selling steaks in America. In America.

mekdoonggi

Makes sense. At the rate we're going, by 2028 the US is going essentially be Venezuela except AI instead of oil.

testfrequency

I do not see the tourism industry mentioned here but I have to imagine that is a huge loss right now. Most of the world is not visiting the US right now which means projects and planning that was made in anticipation for summer has probably been halted or heavily reduced.

ChoGGi

Unexpectedly, if you've been in a coma for the past year. Let's raise tariffs again.

aliljet

There's a vibe in at least the PNW that feels like the tech sector is sloughing jobs and avoiding creating new ones courtesy of AI. I genuinely wonder if that feeling is backed by reality and whether it's large enough to be translating into national statistics across all industries.

imzadi

I would like to know how much contraction is normal. I assume there's always some contraction around that time, because the holiday season is ending and the temp workers are being let go. I didn't see any mention of this in the article though (or I missed it).

mcntsh

Wasn't this always the idea behind combating inflation? At the end of the day you need to make people poorer to make the dollar worth more...

roenxi

> It marked the biggest monthly job loss since October, when the US government shut down, and came amid concerns that a jump in oil prices sparked by the US-Israel war in Iran could threaten growth. It seems like a stretch to say anyone was pro-actively fired on the speculation that a war could break out in the middle east; so the war is probably unrelated. That said, if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed for any length of time then something pretty drastic could happen to employment in the future tense.

paxys

If the government-approved numbers are this bad the real ones must be catastrophic.

chazburger

And yet the fed refuses to lower interest rates

spiderfarmer

The only people left defending the economic “policies” by the current administration are the people who are in a position to profit from all the confusion and chaos. Add to that the people who don’t understand that they are being fleeced and who’ll continue to support theire heroes because of pride, hatred, nihilism or misinformed idealism. There is a vocal minority in the last bracket, but I’m convinced they are being amplified by an army of bots.

r_lee

"unexpectedly"

SecretDreams

Crazy thing is people will vote for this again. Some against their best interest. Others because they appreciate the divide that comes from this type of admin.

iugtmkbdfil834

Current rationalization from right wing commentators: 'normal part of the business cycle' It is not a bad one. You can definitely argue it both ways. I personally think there is a lot of self-inflicted pain ahead and position portfolio accordingly.

metalliqaz

"Unexpectedly" to nobody with an actual job.

nixass

"Trump being president" and "unexpected loss of jobs" does not fit together.

drooopy

Nothing unexpected about it.

sailfast

“Unexpectedly” lol We’ve been digging ourselves a giant AI-inflated hole in the economy for months and folks have just been playing musical chairs to grab as much money as possible before the music stops. Hard to believe it’s taken this long. I never wanted to live through the late 70s / early 80s economically but I guess I’ll have my chance!

h2zizzle

I expected it. I also expect it to get revised even lower, and the gains from the last couple months to disappear. I really wish people would realize that prolonging this farce is not in their best interests. The energy potential of the inevitable blowback just keeps building.

mmastrac

"we're all trying to find the guy who did this!" But seriously, antagonizing all of your trading partners and visitors so that tourism dies, your booze industry gets severely wounded, and making things expensive so the world's most efficient kleptocracy can keep feeding itself has some consequences, I guess.