President Donald Trump's ability to blame his predecessor for the deteriorating economic conditions in the United States is running out, the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote on Tuesday.
This follows a major revision by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the period from April 2024 to March 2025, deleting nearly 1 million jobs that were believed to have been created, which mostly covered the final year of former President Joe Biden's administration but also two months of Trump's second term. It also comes after Trump fired the BLS director in a fit of rage about the most recent monthly jobs numbers being sluggish.
"Mr. Trump has good reason to be frustrated with the reliability of the monthly surveys, though there’s no evidence they were 'rigged,' as he has claimed," wrote the board, which, despite its conservative slant, has come down hard on the president in recent months amid frustration over his tariff policies. "As we’ve pointed out, BLS has overestimated job growth in recent years owing to declining survey response rates. Only 43% of employers respond to the survey, down from 60% before the pandemic."
As for the latest numbers, the Trump administration claims they inherited an economy "even weaker than we thought" — however, the board wrote, "blaming Joe Biden for bad economic news won’t work as an excuse for much longer."
The reason Americans elected Trump, the board continued, is "To lift real wages as he did during his first term with tax cuts and deregulation. His border taxes and deportations are doing the opposite. Job growth stalled this summer amid his tariff barrage. The BLS establishment survey showed that an average of 27,000 jobs were created over the last four months. The number of Americans not in the labor force has increased by 1.2 million since April, more than half of whom said they want a job. The share of teens who are employed has fallen 2.1 percentage points since April, and they are usually the first let go when employers do layoffs."
The upshot, the board concluded, is that "the President could do far more to help businesses, workers and consumers by dropping his anti-growth policies. He may have inherited a weak economy, but he’s in charge now."
