GOP pollster shares chart showing the woeful state of American jobs under Trump

US President Donald Trump might publicly cut a confident and unapologetic figure, but the country has not done well after his first full year in power. While the President has brought down the prices of some essentials like gas, employment remains a major concern. Recently, GOP pollster Frank Luntz shared a chart on X that showed the woeful state of the US job market. He said that employment was down by 123,000 jobs since early 2025.

The chart accompanied a report filed by Joseph Politano, a monetary policy analyst. Politano claimed that the US was losing blue-collar jobs at a pace that was last seen during the early days of the COVID pandemic and the Great Recession. He also claimed that the construction, mining, and utilities sectors were hit by a major slowdown. The reason for all this was the administration’s tariff policy.

“The country is down 65k industrial jobs over the last year, a dramatic reversal from 2024, when the US added a lower-than-usual but still respectable 250k jobs,” Politano wrote. “In total, employment across trades and industry is now down 123k from the all-time peak reached in early 2025 and has been declining nearly every month since February. This is likely underselling the damage as well, since preliminary estimates for upcoming annual jobs data revisions suggest an additional loss of 100k manufacturing jobs and 30k construction jobs.”

To be fair to Trump, manufacturing jobs were falling since before he came to power for a second time. The alarming statistic, however, is that those jobs only constitute 8% of the US workforce. “In total, the US has now lost more than 200k manufacturing jobs compared to the recent peak in early 2023,” Politano wrote. This is a damning report for Trump, who ran his campaign promising jobs in the manufacturing sector.

However, perhaps the steepest decline in jobs of the year was seen by the construction industry. Only 52,000 jobs were added in 2025 compared to the 191,000 in 2024, making it one of the most rapid declines in jobs. “Residential contractors—including plumbers, electricians, roofers, and other specialty workers—have seen by far the most dramatic shift, losing nearly 55k jobs over the last year alone,” Politano wrote. The analyst criticised the government’s policies for hurting the blue-collar job sector rather than easing its pain.

“Yet recent federal policy moves have been counterproductive. Tariffs are hurting blue-collar employment by raising the costs of manufacturing inputs. Immigration raids are disproportionately hurting the construction sector,” he wrote. Politano blamed the cuts to the industry policy subsidies for pushing factory construction down by 8% over the last 12 months. “The administration’s desired 'blue-collar boom' is not happening; quite the opposite,” he added.

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