The June jobs report came out July 2, and the Acting Secretary of Labor read it as a triumph. The administration has "created more than 900,000 jobs," Keith Sonderling said, government employment is at its lowest since 1966, and "manufacturing employment continues to grow" [1]. The department Sonderling runs is the one that publishes the numbers. The numbers do not say what he said.
Start with the headline. June added 57,000 jobs - less than half the roughly 115,000 that forecasters expected, and the government revised April and May down by a combined 74,000 [2]. Sonderling called it a fourth straight month of growth, which is true and also the point: the growth is decelerating, not accelerating.
Data
| Forecast | 115 thousands of jobs added |
|---|---|
| Actual, June | 57 thousands of jobs added |
The unemployment rate held at 4.2 percent, which sounds like stability until you see why. Labor-force participation fell to 61.5 percent, the lowest since March 2021 [2]. The rate did not hold because people found work; it held because people stopped looking and dropped out of the count. Underneath, the sectors tell the same story: leisure and hospitality shed 61,000 jobs in June, and healthcare, usually the engine, added 21,500, well below its own yearly average [5].
Then the manufacturing claim, which is the one that is not a matter of framing but of fact. Factory employment did tick up about 3,000 in June, and Sonderling turned that into "continues to grow." Over the administration's tenure it has done the opposite. US manufacturing is down roughly 77,000 jobs since February 2025, its first full month, having shed jobs in nearly every month of last year [3]. The manufacturing boom the administration promised has not arrived; factory payrolls are lower now than when it started [4].
The honest word for the June report is cooling. Hiring is running at less than half of forecast, the workforce is shrinking, and the factory-jobs revival exists in the press release, not the payroll data. A Labor Secretary is entitled to make the best case for the economy. He is not entitled to a different set of numbers than the ones his own department released.
