Despite the hype by government officials that the U.S. economy is “booming,” pointing to the billions Washington is reaping from tariffs it’s imposing worldwide, facts show that’s not what working people see and face amid today’s mounting capitalist crisis. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for workers to get decent jobs, and persistently high prices for basic necessities continue to squeeze workers and our families.
In early August the Department of Labor admitted that its earlier report crowing that the number of available jobs rose by over 250,000 from May to June was false. Actually, bosses added only 19,000 jobs in May and just 14,000 in June.
And many of these jobs are at lower wages with worse benefits. Over half of the jobs “created” since the beginning of the year have been in health care. From April to July the number of jobs available in mining, logging, manufacturing, wholesale trade and retail trade has declined, as bosses drive to increase their profits through exploiting fewer workers by speeding up production.
The official unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2% in July, from 4.1% the month before. But the number of workers unemployed for 27 weeks or longer increased to 1.83 million, the highest level since 2017, not counting the huge leap in unemployment as the pandemic unfolded. Nearly 2 million workers are getting unemployment payments, the highest number in nearly four years.
With competition for jobs growing fiercer today, more workers give up looking for jobs. They are no longer counted as part of the labor force and no longer figured in counting the unemployment figures. In fact, the labor force actually shrank by 380,000 in the first six months of 2025. The last time that happened was 10 years ago.
Overall, the number of people not being counted in the labor force, considered by Washington to be “discouraged,” jumped by 1.3 million in the first half of 2025.
High prices tightens squeeze
Workers continue to face rising prices on a number of household necessities, including groceries, heat and light, rent and medical care. “I really believe that the American economy has a massive math problem. Everything is getting more expensive but wages have not,” Kiara Carniewski, 31, told the Wall Street Journal Aug. 3. The article explains workers have little choice but to cut back on their spending.
Among those being affected the most are our children. “Nearly 10 million American children are living in poverty, the most since 2018,” the Journal reported. And “tens of millions more … are precariously close.”
Felica Allen, a 39-year-old nursing assistant and single mother, works the graveyard shift in the emergency room at UHS Wilson Medical Center near Binghamton, New York. She returns home to care for her four children, ages 3, 12, 14 and 17, while trying to catch a little sleep before her next shift.
Recently she won a wage increase to $22.90 an hour, but the raise resulted in the government slashing her monthly food stamp benefits from nearly $1,000 to $564. “How do I feed my family now when I was barely making ends meet before?” she told the Journal.
To cover costs, increasing numbers of working people are paying monthly bills with their credit cards, but the high interest rates charged on unpaid balances, a boon to the banks’ profits, put them ever-more deeply in debt. The average annual interest rate on credit card balances rose to 22.25% in May. Over 172 million people in the U.S., that’s over half the total U.S. population, carry a monthly balance on their cards, totaling an average debt of over $6,300 each in the first quarter. Overall, credit card debt now tops $1.2 trillion.