President Donald Trump criticized Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday in his first remarks after a much worse-than-expected jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
“Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should have lowered rates long ago. As usual, he’s ‘Too Late!'” Trump posted to his Truth Social platform.
Trump Piles Pressure on Fed Over Interest Rates
Trump has been pressuring the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates for months, arguing they are needlessly stifling the economy by keeping borrowing costs too high. He has sought to wield greater political influence over the traditionally independent central bank.
A slew of bad jobs data increases the chances that the Fed will cut interest rates at the September meeting of its Federal Open Market Committee, and Powell has signaled that this is likely. Market expectations are also of a rate cut in September.
The Fed has so far resisted cutting rates over concerns that it could fuel an inflationary spike linked to Trump’s tariffs. But a large increase in inflation has yet to materialize, and the jobs market is weakening, giving the Fed some room to cut rates.
Trump has said the American economy is the hottest in the world and attracting huge investments, which he attributes to his tax and trade policies. But the jobs data points to a slowdown, and Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi warned of a recession.
Economic realities felt by voters are typically linked to the political fortunes of those in power, so the jobs numbers are a flashing red light on Trump’s dashboard with the midterms coming in 2026.
President Donald Trump calls on a reporter during a Cabinet meeting with members of his administration in the Cabinet Room of the White House on August 26, 2025, in Washington.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
August Jobs Report Released: What We Know
On Friday morning, the BLS reported that nonfarm payroll employment rose by only 22,000 in August. Analysts had forecast the economy adding 75,000 jobs during the month.
According to the agency, gains made in health care were offset by losses in federal government employment, as well as mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction.
While July’s figures were revised up to 79,000 from 73,000, June’s numbers were revised down by 27,000, dropping from 14,000 to negative-13,000. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate edged up to 4.3 percent from 4.2 percent.
The report came just one month after Trump fired the agency’s commissioner over weak employment data.
Revisions to previous months’ data—which meant June and July’s figures were together 21,000 lower than previously reported—are typical in employment reports.
The BLS said that these are the result of “additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.”
Trump Replaces BLS Chief
In early August, the BLS reported that the U.S. economy had added only 73,000 jobs during July, well below the 110,000 that analysts had penciled in for the month. In addition, the agency revised down figures from May and June by a total of 258,000.
This, combined with allegations of data tampering during the tail end of former President Joe Biden‘s term, led Trump to announce via Truth Social that he had fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.
The decision was criticized by lawmakers, economists and former commissioners, who warned that it set a dangerous precedent for political influence over the agency and could compromise the credibility of future reports.
Days later, Trump said he would be nominating E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, as McEntarfer’s replacement.
Antoni has been a long-standing critic of the BLS and its methodology—dubbing the agency’s statistics “phony baloney” in July and calling on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to “take a chain saw to the BLS” in a November post on X.
Shortly after his nomination, Antoni floated the possibility of doing away with the monthly jobs report in an interview with Fox News.
Update 9/5/25, 11 a.m. ET: This article was updated with more information.