The labor market is slowing, but it’s all good news in the White House.
The U.S. added 139,000 jobs in May, a slight decline from April, according to a jobs report released Friday. The unemployment rate remained at 4.2 percent, still within the ballpark of historic lows reached in 2023, when the unemployment rate reached 3.4 percent—the lowest it had been in more than five decades. But within the folds of the report hid a major red flag for Donald Trump’s agenda: The U.S. is still bleeding manufacturing jobs.
But even the president’s favorite conservative network couldn’t hide its dismay at the slight manufacturing downturn.
“Now, 8,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in May. That’s not what you wanted to see,” said Fox Business host Stuart Varney.
I am not sure about other industry, but in the pharmaceutical industry, several companies decided immediately to set up more manufacturing sites in the US after the tariff threat. But I think it is because these companies are producing weight loss drugs, which is selling like hot cakes since last year, so I think they know that the huge sales will offset the manufacturing cost and tariffs. These weight loss drugs are new and the patent rights is good for 15-20 years. Some industries are just lucky they are insulated from the worst of tariff impositions, while others are not so much.