Since Trump fired the head of BLS because he did not like the numbers being reported how can we believe anything BLS reports. I do not pay attention to the job numbers anymore because I just cannot believe them
I was thinking the same thing - are we supposed to believe anything that comes out of the BLS anymore? With the expectation being a lower jobs report and all the signaling of such that the Trump administration has been doing these last few days, the "unexpectedly high" numbers are immediately suspect.
Of the 393,000 people trump's minions claim to have deported, 7,000 were gang members. That means that trump is bragging about 1.8% of deportees being the worst of the worst. Less than 2%. I'm presuming when they throw these numbers around they all flunked high school (middle school) math because otherwise they would not be bragging. And no, I don't believe the actual numbers.
While we're parsing that sort of thing, the best breakdown I can find says that white evangelicals were 80% for Trump, non-evangelical Protestant whites were 56% Trump, Roman Catholic whites 60% Trump, and non-affiliated whites less than 40%. To break that down by men vs women, add 5% for men and subtract 5% for women for each category, except for non-affiliated, where you have to add and subtract 10%.
Christianity in America seems to be more of a culture club than a moral path.
[Trump] posted the Seven Commandments in the Oval Office omitting “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” and “Thou Shall Not Lie” so that it wouldn’t create a hostile work environment. – Garrison Keillor.
The ‘worst of the worst’ was always designed to be a fig leaf to cover the cruelty of deporting anyone who has immigrated to this country with brown skin, legally or otherwise. People would be fools to believe otherwise.
From Nazi newspapers (pre-WW2 era) one could understand that Jewish people who were gradually (it was a downward but gradual slope) deprived of their rights are exactly this, "the worst of the worst". Plenty of examples in the media (radio broadcasts!) of particular specific (names) thieving and/or conspiring them Jews.
As a social class, they were all supposeddly parasites of the otherwise healthy German society. Burden on the educational system etc.
Very importantly, a large number (50%?) of pre-WW2 German Jewish population were not German citizens. It was (still is) not-that-easy to obtain German citizenship. A large number of Jewish residents from across Europe emigrated (often no papers!) to Germany as a result of WW1, thinking that Germany will be (relatively) the most stable country, against the alternatives. Germany back then was arguably the most advanced country in the world, with great opportunities for immigrants.
Those non-citizen Jewish people were deported out of Germany in 1938. Interestingly, until WW2, Nazi Germany was not routinely arresting Jewish people into any type of prisons/concentration camps. Just harassments and deportations. The US is ahead of the curve with this.
I live here in Idaho. We believe still that our fidelity to Trump and our shiney whiteness protects us from scrutiny and loss. My cohort occasionally fist bumps to American hegemony, but is NOT serving anti-immigrant swill with last year's glee. Even Idaho has Indivisible and No Kings.
That Mayor Rhodes sounds like a nasty piece of work. "Nobody here sees color" which is akin to "All lives matter." And "those weren't 'our people' that were taken away." They were *somebody's* people.
There’s always a good bit of error in the immediate monthly numbers (Paul calls it noise), which they correct as they get more data. So the recent month May have error in it but that doesn’t mean the BLS is fudging the numbers for Trump.
Since your BLS has suffered resourcing cuts the data they are collecting, and the estimates derived, may be less reliable than previously. However, the threat of the "wrath of Trump" will make the BLS reluctant to admit that the figures are even more unreliable. The only reliable "take away" is that the administration will not provide the truth.
I submitted two Google queries as a global reasonableness check. (You can try this yourself.)
Q: how many more individuals held paid employment in the US at any time during 2025, than in 2024?
A: -1.279 million (yes, it is a negative number)
Q: how many more individuals held paid employment in Canada at any time during 2025, than in 2024?
A: +181 thousand
The Bank of Canada and Statistics Canada report that 2025 Canadian job growth was weak and that 2025 was a difficult year for Canadian workers. Neither has been subjected to DOGE, furlough, and write for a target audience who will track the accuracy of their statements. So +181 thousand is not a great jobs number.
Bottom Line: The US economy created fewer jobs in 2025 than an economy 1/10 its size that is known to be struggling.
The statistics for the US are BLS statistics, over a period long enough not be noisy, and simple enough to be hard to misinterpret.
Based on this check, I would say that the most pro-republican assessment an honest analyst could make would be to say, "US job growth is weak, and the US job market is difficult for workers."
Any assessment more favorable is a deliberate attempt to mislead. But so far, the attempt to mislead is deliberate data misinterpretation, not deliberate falsification of data published by core statistical agencies like the BLS.
My little town doesn't seem to have any new construction starting and , it was growing until tRump came along. I wonder what the numbers for new permits were for the past 3 months and 2025 as a whole? I am sure that I am just imagining that the cost of chicken surely seems expensive. It will be interesting to see if the farmers plant any row crops this spring...
In the area I live in, empty industrial shops seem to be increasing in number. Most of the companies occupying these buildings support the natural gas sector. Coal, for the power plant is getting increasingly more expensive to mine (economically viable coal is getting harder to find). Wind projects were killed even before trump showed up. If ya don’t have coal, your coal plant can’t produce. A few burners may be converted to natural gas and there was a small nuke plant proposed but the state killed it (although rumor has it they are still moving dirt). Where we spend time in the summer, there is custom housing being built and those construction workers are obviously Hispanic but you never see ICE. Of course this is a republican state.
When I worked in construction during the dark ages, we lowly carpenters were able to keep track of building permits (we used the information to figure out where we might be able to find work in a few months). This was for large jobs in the Atlanta area, but I would bet the data are available anywhere that permits are required.
good luck with that...expect to pay a lot more and as far as your so called 'illegals' not being competent, that is a lie....many of them in my area (and most are not undocumented but here legally through their employers) are top notch workers and very productive and cheaper; otherwise, the Murican owners would not go through the trouble to bring them in through the visa process.
Immigrants are divided in legal and illegal. The difference is a stamp the passport. You either have it or you don't. It is not the people who are illegal, it is their status. Why call them "undocumented"? These migrants usually have documents: a birth certificate, a passport, a diploma, a degree, etc.
A couple of roofs? Good luck getting "Stephen Miller" approved workers up on your roofs. I guess after they finish screwing up the last iPhone and plucking the feathers of the last chicken
Mr. Pappas, every job I or anyone I know have had done, from roofs to fences to landscaping to you name it, done by so-called illegals, was done extremely well, quickly, efficiently, and sometimes in inclement weather. I did not ask or care if these people were migrants. They were polite, whether or not they spoke English, humble, hardworking, and cleaned up every scrap and nail or any other bit of leftover stuff from the job. I liked and appreciated them, and I've never had a job done that well by American crews, who were impolite, hurried, did a mediocre job, left a mess, and wouldn't come back to fix what they did wrong or badly.
All this administration does is lie. It lies. It lies about its lies and then lies about that. Incredulity is the only stance that makes sense concerning trump's defenestration of the truth.
It seems to me the estimate is ok, at least in terms of the range PK quotes. Of course they published the top end of that range, which might be a nod to dear leader or just how they've been doing it. What is certain is there will be downward revisions.
Well, it's not very good, for one, when you look in the details. When it comes to lies, they go big without abashment, and beyond the top number, the revisions downward don't put a pretty picture on things.
Proof that all those jobs created under Biden were government jobs. Second, with Trump's tariff insanity, the private sector cannot plan properly to buy what's needed to potentially increase job growth by increasing production. If businesses can't plan, then there's no economic growth. I've read statements to this effect from medium sized businesses I purchase from. One of these businesses could not get its new production equipment out of dry dock until they paid the insane tariff on the new machines they purchased during the Biden administration. Every single thing Trump does hurts all the small and medium sized companies that need to plan and can't due to the instability of the leader's decrepit brain and vindictive nature.
oh, and if you don't know something about government jobs, many of them are specialized and don't easily transfer to the private sector. The jobs aren't low level secretarial or accounting jobs. They take years of study on top of several years of experience. That includes jobs at the IRS, which require degrees in accounting and experience in understanding tax law. My sense is you really don't know much about government jobs and simply want, like the Trump administration, to blame the previous administration for the current mess.
Apparently, you were born sometime in either the 80s or 90s, or haven't been able to follow politics and the economy for any period of time. However, let me go back a bit further to point out that inflation was a predominantly Republican phenomenon, going back to Richard Nixon. Inflation rates under Nixon were higher than anything under Biden. After his resignation, and under Gerald Ford's presidency, we had the Whip Inflation Now, or WIN movement, to counter Nixon.....
I won't go into the various recessions since then, which were usually turned around once Democratic leadership took the helm. I will though go back to the pandemic, and the mismanagement of the pandemic and financial malfeasance under Trump. Because of Trump's mismanagement of everything pandemic, goods backed up in ports and our economy ground to a halt. Now, here's a little lesson in how we got inflation under Biden because of Trump: businesses that had lost profits due to the economic shutdow had to first steeply discount all the goods that had been sitting in port for several months. To make up for the losses incurred from discounting those goods, they had to raise the prices on the new, incoming stock. Hence, Inflation.
See how that works??
Further Trump made promises he could not keep --"I'll lower grocery prices DAY ONE"-- because he knew this would get the rubes to vote for him. He did however keep one promise -- "I"ll be a dictator, FOR ONE DAY." One day that doesn't seem to be ending.
The record of the Republicans, since Nixon, has been one of Inflation, Recession, quasi Depression (under Bush II) with recovery under Democrats. However, during Biden's term, there was no way to turn around the inflation that happened due to Trump's mismanagement of the pandemic. This Inflation was vastly different than the Inflation under Nixon, which was caused by corporate price gouging because Unions required fair wages and benefits which cut into corporate profits. Inflation eased under Carter, but it wasn't until the busting of PATCO by the Reagan administration and the crippling of unions, that inflation was brought under control. Between Reagan and Biden, inflation slowed but that also corresponds to significant drops in workers wages and benefits over the past 40 years. Worker wages, rights, and benefits have been in a downward slide since then. This made the inflation caused by the pandemic to appear far, far worse than it was. If workers' wages were what they had been during the Nixon administration, a time of double-digit inflation, no one would have been as bothered as they were. Stagnant worker wages in the face of inflation created the panic we saw, and created a situation where an outright con-man and convicted felon could make promises he could in no way keep, and get rubes to believe him.
Do you get it now? You got conned by the world's greatest con-man, convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, probable pedophile, and definite autocrat. So, y'all on the Republican side right now are looking more like the crazy people with egg on your face, making flimsy excuses for why your president keeps threatening our alliances, and why our labor and stats figures don't seem to jive with the reality on the ground. You might also want to check your news sources about "property grabs" in California. My sources out there say there isn't such a thing going on (and do you *really* have any property worth grabbing?? are you that rich? or are you just "crypto rich?") Also, I'd suggest going back and reading some of Prof. Krugman's substacks from that explain the inflation from the pandemic. You'll see that what he said is pretty much what I've reiterated here.
There was no need for you to be dismissive of my original comment. Dont invite personal attacks with dismissive retorts.
Now that that is out of the way, your analysis leaves out the human cost of “trickle down economics”and alleged growth under Republicans -- while wages stagnated and workers’ lost rights. All of which have enabled an economic shift to what is now referred to as a K shaped economy, social stagnation, and a certain sector of the population willing to believe that immigrants both steal jobs and are too lazy (the proverbial Schrodinger’s Immigrant.)
Welcome to the Gilded Age Redux.
As for the influx at the border, there are many social as well as economic reasons for this that are not available in simple spread sheet form. One thing to note is that Trump’s policies of separating families ar the border and closing the border kept many simply waiting for a shift in government. Although even before Trump it was noted in rhe Obama administration that there were more women with children arriving than previously. To understand rhis shift in migration, from mainly single males to more women with children, we’d have to have data on where families were coming from and what conitions they were fleeing. Catholic Charities may have gathered data as they spearhead many relief related efforts. I have doubts though that there is much data and if there is, where to find it. Also this is just a substack comment and I’m not getting paid to spend time looking for that info 😄
As for initiatives trying to get on ballots vs initiatives already on ballots, Massachusetts has a ballot initiative to shut down the cannabis industry. This would basically be taking a Prohibition era hatchet to a truly booming and lucrative industry. I doubt it will pass because of the numbers of people who know people who have solid jobs with better than average pay in the industry.
Perhaps we need national wealth tax rather than a tremendous tax break for the wealthy that stands to drive up the deficit. But i wont get into that. Don’t have time to bother with further discussion on that quagmire.
(Also, just a little note: a wealth tax is very different from the siezing of property, as you originally referred to it. Let’s not get all hyperbolic than necessary on the idea of redistribution of wealth)
Can I ask why you consider all those government jobs “Potemkin”? My own perspective, I’m in IT and I currently work for a large insurance company. I work with recruiters that sometimes bring up software or data positions with the IRS, DOD, or EPA. I feel like if I left my private sector job for a DOD position that paid me the same, the economic impact would be the same. I am paid the same, I’m buying the same groceries and making the same car and housing payments. Feels like the economic impact would be the same. How is that Potemkin?
Yes, but remember, the only economic indicator Republicans care about--the stock market--is still doing great.
I have worked at companies where the stock went crazy, and it has the effect of destroying people's brains because they think **every single thing the company does right now must be awesome** regardless of how little sense it makes.
Republicans are in the same situation with the USA writ large: they think tariffs, mass deportations, and sending a diplomatic FU to all of our allies and a chaotic trade policy that makes business planning impossible is... a really great strategy because, hey, look at that stock market.
Yesterday, in response to the House asking questions about the DOJ's targeting of Trump's enemies, of letting off the criminals in the Epstein investigation while punishing the victims, Pam Bondi responded by bringing up... the record Dow Industrials average. (Yep, she said that, look it up).
The stock market might go up, or it might go down in the next 9 months. Surely Republicans are going to do absolutely everything they can, legal or illegal, to keep it high, and they will scorch the earth in order to do it. But make no mistake, this is the *only* economic indicator that matters to them and much of their voters.
I doubt that many MAGAts own stocks or even have portfolios. They might watch the stock market numbers, and know that when those go up it's a Good Thing, but you can't tell me that all those people wearing golden diapers in summer '24 own stocks or have 401Ks.
Quite the contrary, stock market participation has greatly increased in the last 20 years to the point where 66% of Americans are exposed to the markets either directly or through something like their retirement plans. And those numbers going up makes those people *feel* more wealthy, even if they aren't withdrawing the gains right this minute.
Anecdotally, the "bro" vote that Trump garnered in 2024--young men--is, in my opinion, almost entirely based on the stock market and crypto prices going up. They just voted their narrow self interests.
I'm not saying it's the entire voting population, but it's surely a huge chunk of the GOP voting base. There's a reason Pam Bondi brought up *the stock market* when defending her department's atrocities yesterday. The message is clear: fascism is great for your stock portfolio.
Oh. I didn't know all that. In my head I still stereotype MAGAts as ignorant rednecks who don't want to hear the truth about their cheeto god. I'll have to adjust my stereotype a bit. I still don't think much of any of them.
That's pretty much it. Many billions of debt-financed speculative investment is skewing the overall numbers, but it's far from a general prosperity. A few tech giants are in a frantic race to achieve AI hegemony first, but it's simply not possible for all of them to ultimately justify the debt they are using to fuel the race, because they obviously can't all achieve a monopoly position.
First, expectations about how well and how soon the LLM platforms will move beyond hallucinations and similar big shortcomings are probably wildly optimistic. Citing nonexistent legal precedents and scientific reports is just the tip of the inaccuracy iceberg. With so much misinformation and disinformation churning arorin the online hunting grounds the models are scooping up and "learning" about, the old garbage-in, garbage-out phenomenon becomes a real problem.
Second, the very giants that are loaning billions to the speculators (so they can use the borrowed money to build massive data centers) are developing newer processing chips that are likely to render whole new data centers functionally obsolete sooner rather than later. If the models aren't profitable enough, how can anyone justify another round of debt-financed development, and another after that?
Third, those data centers are already getting passionate and well-organized local and regional pushback over serious environmental and societal disruptions. The centers are inhaling vast amounts of electricity, which is driving up rates dramatically, and equally vast amounts of water to cool those computers. We could be looking at gigantic buildings with few alternative uses if this turns out to be a bubble whose bursting with make the dot-com crash look like a speed bump.
So today's stock market is pumped up by a few big players, some of which have absurd P/E ratios. Any number of very real possibilities could knock support out from under them, and that may cascade into a much more generalized collapse. It's the old joke about what happens to the average wealth in a bar if Musk and Bezos walk in the door...
Bondi works hard at deflecting and denying reality. But she is not bright enough to be any good about it. The folks who have no significant stock holdings know how the economy is working for them or not working for them, same as the folks who can’t afford to buy that first home (or 20th yacht), same as the folks struggling with student debt having more than repaid the amount borrowed thanks to the interest accruing, and job layoffs.
Cognitive dissonance is the only way MAGA adherents can live. Thus:
Immigrants are coming here and living on the HUGE welfare benefits Democrats give them,
AND
Immigrants are coming here and taking all the good jobs,
AND
Immigrants are living in free government housing,
AND
Immigrants are buying up all the homes,
AND
Because immigrants are no longer working at the good jobs White people should have, those jobs simply stopped existing, which is why White people can't get jobs because the immigrants took all those jobs.
Makes perfect sense . . . if you really need it to.
Speaking of cognitive dissonance, how will trad wives and their tribes respond if the draft is reinstated—including women— to harvest our crops once all of the farm workers have been deported?
Why wouldn't the trad wives also be drafted into the fields? Everyone has read "The Good Earth," so dropping babies while picking tomatoes should part of the experience than makes America great again, no?
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they thought they're free?
Or an amazing willingness (or even eagerness) to be constantly lied to even when what few facts leak into view contradict everything else.
Not long ago, I had a discussion about inheritance taxes with a Rightwinger business associate. He was absolutely convinced that the government was going to take 60% of everything he had as a "death tax." Mind you, this is someone who owns are reasonably successful small business, but the "information" networks he listens to tell him nothing but lies about matters great and small. When I explained that, no, his estate was too small to even trigger the estate tax (his net worth being around $5 million), he was stunned. He even went to his accountant and asked that guy, who confirmed what I told him. Yet . . . he STILL thinks the "death tax" is going to take everything because that's what Fox News tells him. He WANTS to be lied to.
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
No, because 1. he makes me money, and 2. there's just no point. I've known this guy for going on a decade, and I've concluded that he's largely ineducable when comes to this stuff.
I've also concluded that I have an affirmative moral duty to separate him from as much of his money as possible.
We sold what we believed would be our retirement home in benighted Florida and headed back north to a blue state due largely to the poisonous politics of the state and the vile dopiness of so many MAGA Floridians, starting with the governor. It amazed us that so many of our Trump and DeSantis loving neighbors, most of them in the same age demographic as we are (mid 60s), were so enthusiastic about Trump's immigration policies while, all around us, immigrants worked their butts off building our houses, doing our landscaping, taking care of the elderly, and doing such a wide variety of essential work in our communities. All of this while paying taxes and raising their families in a way that reflects well on them and recalls the experience of generations of American immigrants, including my own great grandparents.
Who do these people believe will be providing them home health care as they age? Who will harvest their crops, build their homes, care for their children? Do they want some sketchy Floridian with a meth problem, a GED, and a criminal record coming into their homes to do their housework and help them into the shower?
Trump and his ilk have poisoned the minds of Americans and led them to a dead end with their vile lies, the division of Americans, and the creation of easy scapegoats and targets for their grievances both home and abroad. All of it to distract and capture the votes of a large base of entitled nitwits, gain power, corrupt every democratic institution that was supposed to protect us against tyranny, and steal as much as possible for themselves while leaving the dire and long term consequences for others to deal with.
A-men, brother. I had the stucco on my house totally replaced a few years before Trump destroyed our economy. The contractor (I'm pretty sure) used an immigrant team to do the work. They did an EXCELLENT job and I did my best to make them feel welcome while they worked.
Same experience here Porter. We had a large home improvement job done years ago while living on Long Island and, after struggling with local contractors who did lousy work, weren't reliable, and charged a fortune, we hired a contractor with a large crew from El Salvador.
The Salvadoran crew was outstanding, worked their butts off, did meticulous work, and left the job site perfectly tidy at the end of each day. Their wives brought them lunch and then returned, often with their kids, to help the crew collect their things at the end of the work day. The completed job was fantastic and the professionalism and work ethic of the crew put the local competition to shame.
Reflecting on this experience, I came to the firm conclusion that we should send 5 Long Islanders to El Salvador for every Salvadoran they send our way. I hold the same opinion when it comes to aggrieved Trump loudmouths. We should export them by the planeload in return for the kind of immigrants who've always "made America great".
Not just in America. We were living in England pre-Brexit (in 2008) and Polish workers who’d moved to the UK were just like your Salvadorans. They put the locals to shame, which might be one of the reasons why so many of the English working class voted for Brexit: they resented the competition.
Yes Florida has a massive immigrant population, and ICE is NOT THERE!!! Immigration is a blue state problem ( even though Minnesota has 10% of the immigrants that Florida has).
Exactly. Which is one of the (many) reasons we know that ICE operations aren't about immigration per se, but about oppressing brown people and hurting blue states.
Any immigrant "problem" in Florida will soon be sent to Cuba,I suspect. One hates to imagine how many detention centers might end up there. Trump is probably eying the island as one big detention center, once he gets his hands on it
Not likely. The hatred for Cuba in my lifetime has always been the fact that U.S. companies basically owned the island until the revolution. The attitude of our government has always been that we want that island back and we want to subjugate its people again.
My husband and I had two massive rock walls built on our property. One was 55 ft long and the other 100 ft. long and both six feet high. He hired a team of five men who specialized in building rock walls and they had it done in about four days. Rocks weighing in at 25-75 pounds each at their largest. All of them immigrants.
It was amazing to watch their skill and speed. Our walls are flawless, beautiful and we were happy to pay a fair market price for excellence.
I moved back north for the same reason, I couldn’t deal with the stupidity in FL. FL would shut down if all of the immigrants left the state- no one to do the commercial and household cleaning, landscaping, home healthcare, nursing home care, cooking, childcare, crop picking, construction jobs, etc.
I don't think Trump deserves blame or credit for putting bigoted lies into so many heads - he just proudly says out loud what they were already thinking but had become ashamed to say. That is why so many current Trump-followers (like Tucker Carlson and JD Vance and many others) are on record as having opined earlier about his to-the-core immorality. They didn't realize his vile nature would resonate so well with America. Once he proved he could get votes, they all changed their tune.
Yeah, red-states like Texas and Florida have far greater numbers of illegal immigrants along with much higher crime rates (mostly among the native Texans and Floridians), but they haven't been targeted by Trump's thug army of re-badged "proud boys".
Kind of makes you wonder if the Trump regime is actually full of crap about enforcing immigration laws and that they're actually using the topic of immigrant crime as a pretext to assert authoritarian control of blue states and cities, right?
Meanwhile Vance is married to an India-American whose parents migrated from India. It's a bizzare cognitive dissonance that he's in bed with both neo-Nazis and a woman of colour.
Melania Knavs was not an illegal immigrant. She came on a non-immigrant H-1B visa - which had to be renewed a few times. This type of work visa is for about 80% issued to male workers (under the cap). She got her H-1B in the Tits&Ass exception, but still.
She found a good immigration lawyer and managed to get a work-bound Green Card (these are also mostly issued to males). After five years of presence in the US she requested naturalization.
All US citizens have the right to sponsor their parents for immigration. Which is what she did.
Why someone calls her son Barron an "anchorbaby" I do not understand. Melania had legal status when he was born.
What! Call ICE! They have arrested thousands with better cases than that.
I was calling Melania an "anchor baby", not Barron. But depending on how the process would have worked out if it hadn't been corrupted by politics, Barron might be one too.
My understanding is that Melania came over on a B1/B2 visa. That’s a visitor (tourist) visa that only allows the person to enter the U.S. to visit (or interview). Melania immediately started posing 'a la fresco' -- her day job at the time. Or, as they say in Slovenia, Gola!
Melania Knavs came in 1996 on a B-1/2 visa - the short term visa allowing a foreigner to be in the US for pleasure and BUSINESS. It allows for meetings, presence at trade-fairs, etc. She stayed for about six week and met with photographers, agencies, etc. She did a few try-out shoots apparently. It netted her a job offer. The agency that made it filed for a non-immigrant work visa, the H-1B. She got it for shorter periods than it is normally issued, so had to be extended a few times. (She mentioned that.)
I saw photos from two "risque" shoots for European publications. (In Europe we do not faint when we see a nipple. We also do not have ceilings full of titty lights.) She mainly posed for catalogs for stores etc. as far as I know - catalogs were still big in the 90ies of the previous century.
Much has been made of her Green Card in EB-1 - which is an administrative issue. Having different employers (agencies) means no fixed job, means no sponsoring employer possible. In that case self-petition (in EB-1/A) is allowed. The big advantage: no Labor Certification required - which is the hardest and lengthiest part of EB-3 and EB-2/non-NIW Green Card procedures.
She apparently had a very very good immigration lawyer - which makes all the difference!
I have to admit, your details are better than any of the media sources I checked. It makes me wonder why you are so keyed in to these details. And how you have such access. It's almost as though you have a special channel right into Melania's affairs. Almost.
My dad used to say, "Figures don't lie. But liars figure." In the underworld of gaming the legal system and influence peddling, perhaps the corresponding statement is, "Justice uses laws. But laws sometimes aren't just."
Having personal experience with the US immigration system helps. The devil is truly in the details. Melania Knavs managed to beat that sexist (and racist) system, twice. Personally, I was not that lucky. Yes, Amsterdam is a great city. Nice you were able to visit there!
As we have all seen, the tactics of the Trump Administration in deporting immigrants are horrific. There is no current federal law that allows people to sue the federal government for civil liberties violations by federal officers. A Supreme Court case, Bivens, allows civil suits against the federal government, but has been narrowed down to make it close to non-existent. There is a current pending bill in Congress, the Bivens Act, that would allow people to sue the federal government for civil rights violations, just like we can for civil rights violations by local and state police officers. Here's a sample letter you could send to your Congressional Representatives to try to attach a bill to the pending funding of the Department of Homeland Security that would allow civil suits against the federal government.
Every member of ICE and CBP swears an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. If an ICE or CBP officer violates that oath by trampling on the civil rights of any person in America, the Renee Good and Alex Pretti Civil Rights Act (renamed Bivens Act) will allow people to sue the federal government when their civil rights are violated by federal officers, in honor of the memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good and all people who have had their civil liberties violated by federal officers. Congress should not support any more funding for ICE or CBP as long as ICE and CBP officers can continue to openly and violently violate the rights of people in America without consequences.
Trump and Kennedy will eventually kill millions more with their anti-vax, anti-science, anti-climate change and anti healthcare “policies.” Trump and his billionaire buddies don’t care if we die. Actually they would prefer it.
If millions die who will serve the billionaires their drinks and "wipe their arses. They will have to import "slaves/servants" from Latin America, or even Africa. Roll on the "gilded age".
It isnt all being met with cheers. Aragon,Spain region election just saw an increase in election gains for the right wing PP and the far right Vox. Fears about increased competition for housing,jobs and healthcare
Really excellent / clear / short -- no TL;DR for this -- analysis of how utterly self-destructive the vicious and anti-human Trump / Miller immigration "policy" is.
To the three sectors you mentioned, I'm sure the figures for areas like agricultural field work & meatpacking could be equally disturbing -- and even Trumpists would have to be struck by the inflationary impact on food prices their psycho obsessions will insure.
Every day confirms the downward spiral of not just the economy, as you note, but the health of American society.
It would be nice if some of the DC Democrats read what you're saying and combined the negative economic AND human effects this brutal madness is creating.
Republicans have been attacking the social safety net supported by the Federal Government, forever. The Republican Universal Health Care plan: You get sick, you die. The senior population for Republicans is a burden that has been in their sights for years. The senior population in other parts of the world is a significant part of the community structure. When in Spain, I noticed the senior population regularly out and about every afternoon in the public squares interacting with their peers and families. In the United States, the senior population is encouraged to disappear into senior communities or assisted living facilities. In the United States, the Republicans encourage the elders to disappear and die. Social Security is just a burden on the working population and payouts are entitlements, not to be confused with benefits saved and paid for by the same seniors when they were working and contributing to their futures.
The Republican plan has always been, you get sick, you die and when you get old, you have a duty to die (this was an idea floated by former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, Democrat, but is fits so well in the current Republican philosophy).
Stagnation is exactly what I've been thinking all year - that we went right back into that icky mess of the back half of 2020. (Effectively producing a measurement of how much in 2020 was bad because of a disease and how much of the nasty vibe of 2020 was due to Trump - about half.)
The demographic issues, to my eye, to be about declining economic prospects. The mass unemployment and crappy wage gains of the post-2008 dragged on for years, and the promptly segued into the gross upper class jamboree of 2017-2019. Continued declining birth rates, increases in excess deaths due to overdoses, suicides and poor health care, skidding immigration et al. created the demographic crisis. Increased costs in housing, health cafe and education negated any gains.
Biden came in, did the recovery spending (that the Street and wealthy hated so very very much), and the economy took off like I hadn't seen since the 90's. Putin, MBS and avian flu intervened, so we get an inflation spike, but employment and job growth remained.
Trump comes back in and everything heads straight into the gutter. I'd bet excess death are crawling upwards again. In some sense, Trump IS the demographic crisis. The 2% target and the need to appease the ultra-wealthy are the other part.
The economically right-wing usual suspects wanted to go back, and here we are. The problem being that the 1870's, 80's and 90's featured poor growth and economic stagnation EXCEPT for all the incoming immigration from Eastern Europe and they've gone and cut that route off.
We've got a fantastic speculative bubble that'll end in a 2008/1929/1907-style crash, so I suppose we have that going for us.
elm
trump's raking it in, so somebody is doing well financially
Economic oligarchy hated Biden's Keynesian stimulus and directed investment almost as much as they hated Lina Khan and the threat of higher marginal tax rates.
Are you sure the BLS data you quoted is accurate? After all, trump sacked its previous head because he didn’t like the numbers. Maybe the new boss is releasing fake figures to placate the maniac in charge.
The AI solution: AI replaces all the woke lawyers who then take jobs emptying bed pans in nursing homes…🤔 Wait: does AI pay taxes? Does AI buy goods and services? Immigrants do all of these things;many are (at least we’re) thankful for the opportunity to be in this country.
Greed, not social democracy will destroy (is destroying) our country.
"Every year since 1994, when data collection began, immigrants have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits from the federal, state, and local governments. The fiscal benefits have continued to rise, reaching their highest level ever in 2023."
So this deportation push is not only causing the job market to stagnate and making elder care less available and less affordable, it is also going to increase government deficits.
While I generally agree with Dr. Krugman I am not sure that illegal immigration has not had a very negative impact on unions in the construction industry. Since the 2008 recession the percentage of unionized workers in that industry has dropped precipitously.
Union coverage began dropping in the 1970s. It isn’t just related to immigration. I worked in a union shop in the trades in the mid 1980s and the interest of Boomers in continuing their union affiliation was dropping like a stone. They bought the short-term thinking of saving union dues the Epstein class had been touting for over a decade. Subsequent generations just accelerated this process.
My dad was a strong union man (carpenter's union) all his life. I used to go with him to an annual honorary lunch they would provide for retired members who had been in the union for a long time. From my personal observation, you (Les) are absolutely right. My dad was among the last to enjoy mostly full employment as a union member. Of course, partly because he was a damn good carpenter and worked so hard and all the contractors knew it.
My dad was a big advocate of apprenticeships (something the carpenters tried hard to support). A carpenter's apprentice could get paid to learn alongside someone who knew what they were doing ... as opposed to going deeply into debt to some school and being expected to learn something from a book or a lecture hall.
Germany ... a country that knows how to work, even though they go off the rails occasionally ... depends on apprenticeship programs for a strong, effective workforce.
I was a computer programmer and unions have NEVER been any part of that scene at all. But an apprenticeship program would have helped a lot. As a middle manager of software development, I was expected to find people who knew what they were doing right out of thin air and pay them a full salary for years while they figured it out. Tech bro's (like, for example, Andreesen) starved in undergraduate programs while they learned pretty much completely on their own and then hit the jackpot with some innovative thing. With Andreesen, it was the first commercial smash hit web browser. I wonder if that experience is what turned Andreesen into Scrooge McDuck. Check out the programmer in the very first "Jurassic Park" movie. Andreesen is almost a perfect match.
In a lot of apocalyptic disaster movies, the world explodes in just a few days or weeks while the main character stands there and watches it happen. I feel like that's happening now.
Since Trump fired the head of BLS because he did not like the numbers being reported how can we believe anything BLS reports. I do not pay attention to the job numbers anymore because I just cannot believe them
I was thinking the same thing - are we supposed to believe anything that comes out of the BLS anymore? With the expectation being a lower jobs report and all the signaling of such that the Trump administration has been doing these last few days, the "unexpectedly high" numbers are immediately suspect.
This is where it gets personal. A rural community in deep red Idaho was raided by ICE. They disappeared and deported dozens of working migrants.
Now the residents are wondering who will plant and harvest the crops and do all the dirtywork. They never thought it could happen here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/us/politics/trump-deportation-idaho.html?unlocked_article_code=1.LlA.P2Zn.lkbjudxCokcD&smid=url-share
Of the 393,000 people trump's minions claim to have deported, 7,000 were gang members. That means that trump is bragging about 1.8% of deportees being the worst of the worst. Less than 2%. I'm presuming when they throw these numbers around they all flunked high school (middle school) math because otherwise they would not be bragging. And no, I don't believe the actual numbers.
If I might add the mean-spirited cadre in the White House purporting to wear the mantle of Christianity are in fact *Godless*
Many atheists, such as the Dalai lama, are very moral. We should be careful in the use of the word “Godless”.
While we're parsing that sort of thing, the best breakdown I can find says that white evangelicals were 80% for Trump, non-evangelical Protestant whites were 56% Trump, Roman Catholic whites 60% Trump, and non-affiliated whites less than 40%. To break that down by men vs women, add 5% for men and subtract 5% for women for each category, except for non-affiliated, where you have to add and subtract 10%.
Christianity in America seems to be more of a culture club than a moral path.
[Trump] posted the Seven Commandments in the Oval Office omitting “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery” and “Thou Shall Not Lie” so that it wouldn’t create a hostile work environment. – Garrison Keillor.
Not to mention lawless, classless, senseless, brainless, empathyless, conscienceless, and many other deficiencies of which they're proud.
Pretty much. In context, I didn't mean 'Godless' as atheistic, but sociopathic.
ICE isn’t going after the worst. It’s hiring them.
The ‘worst of the worst’ was always designed to be a fig leaf to cover the cruelty of deporting anyone who has immigrated to this country with brown skin, legally or otherwise. People would be fools to believe otherwise.
From Nazi newspapers (pre-WW2 era) one could understand that Jewish people who were gradually (it was a downward but gradual slope) deprived of their rights are exactly this, "the worst of the worst". Plenty of examples in the media (radio broadcasts!) of particular specific (names) thieving and/or conspiring them Jews.
As a social class, they were all supposeddly parasites of the otherwise healthy German society. Burden on the educational system etc.
Very importantly, a large number (50%?) of pre-WW2 German Jewish population were not German citizens. It was (still is) not-that-easy to obtain German citizenship. A large number of Jewish residents from across Europe emigrated (often no papers!) to Germany as a result of WW1, thinking that Germany will be (relatively) the most stable country, against the alternatives. Germany back then was arguably the most advanced country in the world, with great opportunities for immigrants.
Those non-citizen Jewish people were deported out of Germany in 1938. Interestingly, until WW2, Nazi Germany was not routinely arresting Jewish people into any type of prisons/concentration camps. Just harassments and deportations. The US is ahead of the curve with this.
And how many of those "gang members" simply had MS13 photoshopped onto a picture of their knuckles?
I live here in Idaho. We believe still that our fidelity to Trump and our shiney whiteness protects us from scrutiny and loss. My cohort occasionally fist bumps to American hegemony, but is NOT serving anti-immigrant swill with last year's glee. Even Idaho has Indivisible and No Kings.
That Mayor Rhodes sounds like a nasty piece of work. "Nobody here sees color" which is akin to "All lives matter." And "those weren't 'our people' that were taken away." They were *somebody's* people.
I think the technical term here would be, “FAFO.”
Q.E.D.
Thank you for leaving the NYT article. I guess they got what they voted for. The mayor is a piece of work!
They are. Get ready for the consequences of your poor decisions, Idaho.
They are. Get ready for the consequences of your poor decisions, Idahoans.
There’s always a good bit of error in the immediate monthly numbers (Paul calls it noise), which they correct as they get more data. So the recent month May have error in it but that doesn’t mean the BLS is fudging the numbers for Trump.
Since your BLS has suffered resourcing cuts the data they are collecting, and the estimates derived, may be less reliable than previously. However, the threat of the "wrath of Trump" will make the BLS reluctant to admit that the figures are even more unreliable. The only reliable "take away" is that the administration will not provide the truth.
Given tRumps shoot the messenger style of management it is difficult to see how self preservation at BLS probably has some influence on reporting.
The hugest, greatest bigly economy of all time ! !
"Bigliest". It's yuuuuuuuuggggggeeee!
I submitted two Google queries as a global reasonableness check. (You can try this yourself.)
Q: how many more individuals held paid employment in the US at any time during 2025, than in 2024?
A: -1.279 million (yes, it is a negative number)
Q: how many more individuals held paid employment in Canada at any time during 2025, than in 2024?
A: +181 thousand
The Bank of Canada and Statistics Canada report that 2025 Canadian job growth was weak and that 2025 was a difficult year for Canadian workers. Neither has been subjected to DOGE, furlough, and write for a target audience who will track the accuracy of their statements. So +181 thousand is not a great jobs number.
Bottom Line: The US economy created fewer jobs in 2025 than an economy 1/10 its size that is known to be struggling.
The statistics for the US are BLS statistics, over a period long enough not be noisy, and simple enough to be hard to misinterpret.
Based on this check, I would say that the most pro-republican assessment an honest analyst could make would be to say, "US job growth is weak, and the US job market is difficult for workers."
Any assessment more favorable is a deliberate attempt to mislead. But so far, the attempt to mislead is deliberate data misinterpretation, not deliberate falsification of data published by core statistical agencies like the BLS.
Restacked. Thank you for posting this useful comparison.
We just don’t know. That is the issue!!!
Betcha the corrections don't show up this time.
True, but firing someone because they produced bad numbers creates suspicion.
True, but Paul has said that there are a lot of dedicated civil servants who work at BLS and changing the data would be very difficult.
I’m sure there are. But it only takes a few corrupt higher-ups. Let’s hope there are none!
My little town doesn't seem to have any new construction starting and , it was growing until tRump came along. I wonder what the numbers for new permits were for the past 3 months and 2025 as a whole? I am sure that I am just imagining that the cost of chicken surely seems expensive. It will be interesting to see if the farmers plant any row crops this spring...
In the area I live in, empty industrial shops seem to be increasing in number. Most of the companies occupying these buildings support the natural gas sector. Coal, for the power plant is getting increasingly more expensive to mine (economically viable coal is getting harder to find). Wind projects were killed even before trump showed up. If ya don’t have coal, your coal plant can’t produce. A few burners may be converted to natural gas and there was a small nuke plant proposed but the state killed it (although rumor has it they are still moving dirt). Where we spend time in the summer, there is custom housing being built and those construction workers are obviously Hispanic but you never see ICE. Of course this is a republican state.
Donnie has announced a plan to subsidize coal fire power plants that are economically unprofitable. I'm sure there's a grift involved.
When I worked in construction during the dark ages, we lowly carpenters were able to keep track of building permits (we used the information to figure out where we might be able to find work in a few months). This was for large jobs in the Atlanta area, but I would bet the data are available anywhere that permits are required.
good luck with that...expect to pay a lot more and as far as your so called 'illegals' not being competent, that is a lie....many of them in my area (and most are not undocumented but here legally through their employers) are top notch workers and very productive and cheaper; otherwise, the Murican owners would not go through the trouble to bring them in through the visa process.
Well, that's utter nonsense. But good luck with that.
What an incredibly delusional comment.
It’s always interesting to look under the hood of a commenters profile; at the vacuousness of a bigots brain.
You really are an idiot, aren’t you? Your use of the word. ‘Illegals’ gives you away.
Immigrants are divided in legal and illegal. The difference is a stamp the passport. You either have it or you don't. It is not the people who are illegal, it is their status. Why call them "undocumented"? These migrants usually have documents: a birth certificate, a passport, a diploma, a degree, etc.
If you hire people hanging out at Home Depot, well, you get what you pay for.
Too bad you didn't learn how to do the work yourself.
A couple of roofs? Good luck getting "Stephen Miller" approved workers up on your roofs. I guess after they finish screwing up the last iPhone and plucking the feathers of the last chicken
Mr. Pappas, every job I or anyone I know have had done, from roofs to fences to landscaping to you name it, done by so-called illegals, was done extremely well, quickly, efficiently, and sometimes in inclement weather. I did not ask or care if these people were migrants. They were polite, whether or not they spoke English, humble, hardworking, and cleaned up every scrap and nail or any other bit of leftover stuff from the job. I liked and appreciated them, and I've never had a job done that well by American crews, who were impolite, hurried, did a mediocre job, left a mess, and wouldn't come back to fix what they did wrong or badly.
If you want to overthrow government and and become a decrepit despot disbiotic despot like Mussolini it is important to create mistrust in government
Just maybe they should learn what happened to Mussolini in the end.
I completely agree with this. I don’t believe one piece of data that comes out of this administration.
All this administration does is lie. It lies. It lies about its lies and then lies about that. Incredulity is the only stance that makes sense concerning trump's defenestration of the truth.
They lie so much they might accidentally tell the truth, not that they’d know.
It seems to me the estimate is ok, at least in terms of the range PK quotes. Of course they published the top end of that range, which might be a nod to dear leader or just how they've been doing it. What is certain is there will be downward revisions.
Well, it's not very good, for one, when you look in the details. When it comes to lies, they go big without abashment, and beyond the top number, the revisions downward don't put a pretty picture on things.
Mr. Global: Trump Lied About Oil Production Records And I Figured Out How.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KokpQZb2_s
Proof that all those jobs created under Biden were government jobs. Second, with Trump's tariff insanity, the private sector cannot plan properly to buy what's needed to potentially increase job growth by increasing production. If businesses can't plan, then there's no economic growth. I've read statements to this effect from medium sized businesses I purchase from. One of these businesses could not get its new production equipment out of dry dock until they paid the insane tariff on the new machines they purchased during the Biden administration. Every single thing Trump does hurts all the small and medium sized companies that need to plan and can't due to the instability of the leader's decrepit brain and vindictive nature.
oh, and if you don't know something about government jobs, many of them are specialized and don't easily transfer to the private sector. The jobs aren't low level secretarial or accounting jobs. They take years of study on top of several years of experience. That includes jobs at the IRS, which require degrees in accounting and experience in understanding tax law. My sense is you really don't know much about government jobs and simply want, like the Trump administration, to blame the previous administration for the current mess.
Apparently, you were born sometime in either the 80s or 90s, or haven't been able to follow politics and the economy for any period of time. However, let me go back a bit further to point out that inflation was a predominantly Republican phenomenon, going back to Richard Nixon. Inflation rates under Nixon were higher than anything under Biden. After his resignation, and under Gerald Ford's presidency, we had the Whip Inflation Now, or WIN movement, to counter Nixon.....
I won't go into the various recessions since then, which were usually turned around once Democratic leadership took the helm. I will though go back to the pandemic, and the mismanagement of the pandemic and financial malfeasance under Trump. Because of Trump's mismanagement of everything pandemic, goods backed up in ports and our economy ground to a halt. Now, here's a little lesson in how we got inflation under Biden because of Trump: businesses that had lost profits due to the economic shutdow had to first steeply discount all the goods that had been sitting in port for several months. To make up for the losses incurred from discounting those goods, they had to raise the prices on the new, incoming stock. Hence, Inflation.
See how that works??
Further Trump made promises he could not keep --"I'll lower grocery prices DAY ONE"-- because he knew this would get the rubes to vote for him. He did however keep one promise -- "I"ll be a dictator, FOR ONE DAY." One day that doesn't seem to be ending.
The record of the Republicans, since Nixon, has been one of Inflation, Recession, quasi Depression (under Bush II) with recovery under Democrats. However, during Biden's term, there was no way to turn around the inflation that happened due to Trump's mismanagement of the pandemic. This Inflation was vastly different than the Inflation under Nixon, which was caused by corporate price gouging because Unions required fair wages and benefits which cut into corporate profits. Inflation eased under Carter, but it wasn't until the busting of PATCO by the Reagan administration and the crippling of unions, that inflation was brought under control. Between Reagan and Biden, inflation slowed but that also corresponds to significant drops in workers wages and benefits over the past 40 years. Worker wages, rights, and benefits have been in a downward slide since then. This made the inflation caused by the pandemic to appear far, far worse than it was. If workers' wages were what they had been during the Nixon administration, a time of double-digit inflation, no one would have been as bothered as they were. Stagnant worker wages in the face of inflation created the panic we saw, and created a situation where an outright con-man and convicted felon could make promises he could in no way keep, and get rubes to believe him.
Do you get it now? You got conned by the world's greatest con-man, convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, probable pedophile, and definite autocrat. So, y'all on the Republican side right now are looking more like the crazy people with egg on your face, making flimsy excuses for why your president keeps threatening our alliances, and why our labor and stats figures don't seem to jive with the reality on the ground. You might also want to check your news sources about "property grabs" in California. My sources out there say there isn't such a thing going on (and do you *really* have any property worth grabbing?? are you that rich? or are you just "crypto rich?") Also, I'd suggest going back and reading some of Prof. Krugman's substacks from that explain the inflation from the pandemic. You'll see that what he said is pretty much what I've reiterated here.
There was no need for you to be dismissive of my original comment. Dont invite personal attacks with dismissive retorts.
Now that that is out of the way, your analysis leaves out the human cost of “trickle down economics”and alleged growth under Republicans -- while wages stagnated and workers’ lost rights. All of which have enabled an economic shift to what is now referred to as a K shaped economy, social stagnation, and a certain sector of the population willing to believe that immigrants both steal jobs and are too lazy (the proverbial Schrodinger’s Immigrant.)
Welcome to the Gilded Age Redux.
As for the influx at the border, there are many social as well as economic reasons for this that are not available in simple spread sheet form. One thing to note is that Trump’s policies of separating families ar the border and closing the border kept many simply waiting for a shift in government. Although even before Trump it was noted in rhe Obama administration that there were more women with children arriving than previously. To understand rhis shift in migration, from mainly single males to more women with children, we’d have to have data on where families were coming from and what conitions they were fleeing. Catholic Charities may have gathered data as they spearhead many relief related efforts. I have doubts though that there is much data and if there is, where to find it. Also this is just a substack comment and I’m not getting paid to spend time looking for that info 😄
As for initiatives trying to get on ballots vs initiatives already on ballots, Massachusetts has a ballot initiative to shut down the cannabis industry. This would basically be taking a Prohibition era hatchet to a truly booming and lucrative industry. I doubt it will pass because of the numbers of people who know people who have solid jobs with better than average pay in the industry.
Perhaps we need national wealth tax rather than a tremendous tax break for the wealthy that stands to drive up the deficit. But i wont get into that. Don’t have time to bother with further discussion on that quagmire.
(Also, just a little note: a wealth tax is very different from the siezing of property, as you originally referred to it. Let’s not get all hyperbolic than necessary on the idea of redistribution of wealth)
You live in a reality created by right wing propagandists.
Can I ask why you consider all those government jobs “Potemkin”? My own perspective, I’m in IT and I currently work for a large insurance company. I work with recruiters that sometimes bring up software or data positions with the IRS, DOD, or EPA. I feel like if I left my private sector job for a DOD position that paid me the same, the economic impact would be the same. I am paid the same, I’m buying the same groceries and making the same car and housing payments. Feels like the economic impact would be the same. How is that Potemkin?
Take gun from holster. Shoot foot.
- claim immigrant shot you in foot.
Or that Biden shot you.
- Or your lying eyes are "fake news" - foot is not bleeding
- Or foot is so much better off after being shot
Foot? What foot?
Feet are fake
And then order the regional airspace closed for ten days.
Or leave gun in holster and pull trigger.
Yes, but remember, the only economic indicator Republicans care about--the stock market--is still doing great.
I have worked at companies where the stock went crazy, and it has the effect of destroying people's brains because they think **every single thing the company does right now must be awesome** regardless of how little sense it makes.
Republicans are in the same situation with the USA writ large: they think tariffs, mass deportations, and sending a diplomatic FU to all of our allies and a chaotic trade policy that makes business planning impossible is... a really great strategy because, hey, look at that stock market.
Yesterday, in response to the House asking questions about the DOJ's targeting of Trump's enemies, of letting off the criminals in the Epstein investigation while punishing the victims, Pam Bondi responded by bringing up... the record Dow Industrials average. (Yep, she said that, look it up).
The stock market might go up, or it might go down in the next 9 months. Surely Republicans are going to do absolutely everything they can, legal or illegal, to keep it high, and they will scorch the earth in order to do it. But make no mistake, this is the *only* economic indicator that matters to them and much of their voters.
I doubt that many MAGAts own stocks or even have portfolios. They might watch the stock market numbers, and know that when those go up it's a Good Thing, but you can't tell me that all those people wearing golden diapers in summer '24 own stocks or have 401Ks.
Quite the contrary, stock market participation has greatly increased in the last 20 years to the point where 66% of Americans are exposed to the markets either directly or through something like their retirement plans. And those numbers going up makes those people *feel* more wealthy, even if they aren't withdrawing the gains right this minute.
Anecdotally, the "bro" vote that Trump garnered in 2024--young men--is, in my opinion, almost entirely based on the stock market and crypto prices going up. They just voted their narrow self interests.
I'm not saying it's the entire voting population, but it's surely a huge chunk of the GOP voting base. There's a reason Pam Bondi brought up *the stock market* when defending her department's atrocities yesterday. The message is clear: fascism is great for your stock portfolio.
Oh. I didn't know all that. In my head I still stereotype MAGAts as ignorant rednecks who don't want to hear the truth about their cheeto god. I'll have to adjust my stereotype a bit. I still don't think much of any of them.
Huge investments in AI are keeping the stock markets humming.
That's pretty much it. Many billions of debt-financed speculative investment is skewing the overall numbers, but it's far from a general prosperity. A few tech giants are in a frantic race to achieve AI hegemony first, but it's simply not possible for all of them to ultimately justify the debt they are using to fuel the race, because they obviously can't all achieve a monopoly position.
First, expectations about how well and how soon the LLM platforms will move beyond hallucinations and similar big shortcomings are probably wildly optimistic. Citing nonexistent legal precedents and scientific reports is just the tip of the inaccuracy iceberg. With so much misinformation and disinformation churning arorin the online hunting grounds the models are scooping up and "learning" about, the old garbage-in, garbage-out phenomenon becomes a real problem.
Second, the very giants that are loaning billions to the speculators (so they can use the borrowed money to build massive data centers) are developing newer processing chips that are likely to render whole new data centers functionally obsolete sooner rather than later. If the models aren't profitable enough, how can anyone justify another round of debt-financed development, and another after that?
Third, those data centers are already getting passionate and well-organized local and regional pushback over serious environmental and societal disruptions. The centers are inhaling vast amounts of electricity, which is driving up rates dramatically, and equally vast amounts of water to cool those computers. We could be looking at gigantic buildings with few alternative uses if this turns out to be a bubble whose bursting with make the dot-com crash look like a speed bump.
So today's stock market is pumped up by a few big players, some of which have absurd P/E ratios. Any number of very real possibilities could knock support out from under them, and that may cascade into a much more generalized collapse. It's the old joke about what happens to the average wealth in a bar if Musk and Bezos walk in the door...
Yep.
Trump has gotten so, so lucky with the business cycle...
Indeed!
Bondi works hard at deflecting and denying reality. But she is not bright enough to be any good about it. The folks who have no significant stock holdings know how the economy is working for them or not working for them, same as the folks who can’t afford to buy that first home (or 20th yacht), same as the folks struggling with student debt having more than repaid the amount borrowed thanks to the interest accruing, and job layoffs.
Why take from holster? Just shoot.
You can shot through the holster, no need to was effort.
Gun tumbles from shoddy holster. Foot shot.
It’s more effective with the trump machine gun
Too much work. Just pull the trigger trying to take the gun out of the holster.
Cognitive dissonance is the only way MAGA adherents can live. Thus:
Immigrants are coming here and living on the HUGE welfare benefits Democrats give them,
AND
Immigrants are coming here and taking all the good jobs,
AND
Immigrants are living in free government housing,
AND
Immigrants are buying up all the homes,
AND
Because immigrants are no longer working at the good jobs White people should have, those jobs simply stopped existing, which is why White people can't get jobs because the immigrants took all those jobs.
Makes perfect sense . . . if you really need it to.
Speaking of cognitive dissonance, how will trad wives and their tribes respond if the draft is reinstated—including women— to harvest our crops once all of the farm workers have been deported?
Why wouldn't the trad wives also be drafted into the fields? Everyone has read "The Good Earth," so dropping babies while picking tomatoes should part of the experience than makes America great again, no?
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they thought they're free?
Not "everyone" has read Pearl Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Actually reading books is so "earlier generation". But it's a nice thought.
She wrote the book about the upcoming midterms. It's called "The Big Wave". It's all about One Big Beautiful Blue Tsunami.
What is a Pearlbuck?
It's like a TrumpCoin, but more valuable...
Read enough to remember the starvation people faced
Maybe this administration’s catch phrase will be “ Let them eat dirt “ ?
If it was good enough for our great-grandmothers, the definition of traditional, then surely it is good enough for our wives!
💯
How can they be out in the fields when their duty in life is to stay home and take care of all those babies?
There are already exceptions being made for "guest workers."
"Carve outs", just like for the tariffs.
Here’s the problem, though, cognitive dissonance requires some desire for and knowledge of actual facts.
Or an amazing willingness (or even eagerness) to be constantly lied to even when what few facts leak into view contradict everything else.
Not long ago, I had a discussion about inheritance taxes with a Rightwinger business associate. He was absolutely convinced that the government was going to take 60% of everything he had as a "death tax." Mind you, this is someone who owns are reasonably successful small business, but the "information" networks he listens to tell him nothing but lies about matters great and small. When I explained that, no, his estate was too small to even trigger the estate tax (his net worth being around $5 million), he was stunned. He even went to his accountant and asked that guy, who confirmed what I told him. Yet . . . he STILL thinks the "death tax" is going to take everything because that's what Fox News tells him. He WANTS to be lied to.
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command". -O'Brien
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
H. L. Mencken
did u tell him to get his head out of the fox news ass?
No, because 1. he makes me money, and 2. there's just no point. I've known this guy for going on a decade, and I've concluded that he's largely ineducable when comes to this stuff.
I've also concluded that I have an affirmative moral duty to separate him from as much of his money as possible.
Stunning
yep total bullshit lies that the cultists believe....it is easier to fool people than to convince them they've been fooled
We sold what we believed would be our retirement home in benighted Florida and headed back north to a blue state due largely to the poisonous politics of the state and the vile dopiness of so many MAGA Floridians, starting with the governor. It amazed us that so many of our Trump and DeSantis loving neighbors, most of them in the same age demographic as we are (mid 60s), were so enthusiastic about Trump's immigration policies while, all around us, immigrants worked their butts off building our houses, doing our landscaping, taking care of the elderly, and doing such a wide variety of essential work in our communities. All of this while paying taxes and raising their families in a way that reflects well on them and recalls the experience of generations of American immigrants, including my own great grandparents.
Who do these people believe will be providing them home health care as they age? Who will harvest their crops, build their homes, care for their children? Do they want some sketchy Floridian with a meth problem, a GED, and a criminal record coming into their homes to do their housework and help them into the shower?
Trump and his ilk have poisoned the minds of Americans and led them to a dead end with their vile lies, the division of Americans, and the creation of easy scapegoats and targets for their grievances both home and abroad. All of it to distract and capture the votes of a large base of entitled nitwits, gain power, corrupt every democratic institution that was supposed to protect us against tyranny, and steal as much as possible for themselves while leaving the dire and long term consequences for others to deal with.
A-men, brother. I had the stucco on my house totally replaced a few years before Trump destroyed our economy. The contractor (I'm pretty sure) used an immigrant team to do the work. They did an EXCELLENT job and I did my best to make them feel welcome while they worked.
Same experience here Porter. We had a large home improvement job done years ago while living on Long Island and, after struggling with local contractors who did lousy work, weren't reliable, and charged a fortune, we hired a contractor with a large crew from El Salvador.
The Salvadoran crew was outstanding, worked their butts off, did meticulous work, and left the job site perfectly tidy at the end of each day. Their wives brought them lunch and then returned, often with their kids, to help the crew collect their things at the end of the work day. The completed job was fantastic and the professionalism and work ethic of the crew put the local competition to shame.
Reflecting on this experience, I came to the firm conclusion that we should send 5 Long Islanders to El Salvador for every Salvadoran they send our way. I hold the same opinion when it comes to aggrieved Trump loudmouths. We should export them by the planeload in return for the kind of immigrants who've always "made America great".
Not just in America. We were living in England pre-Brexit (in 2008) and Polish workers who’d moved to the UK were just like your Salvadorans. They put the locals to shame, which might be one of the reasons why so many of the English working class voted for Brexit: they resented the competition.
I wish I could easily find workers like that near me.
Yes Florida has a massive immigrant population, and ICE is NOT THERE!!! Immigration is a blue state problem ( even though Minnesota has 10% of the immigrants that Florida has).
Exactly. Which is one of the (many) reasons we know that ICE operations aren't about immigration per se, but about oppressing brown people and hurting blue states.
Any immigrant "problem" in Florida will soon be sent to Cuba,I suspect. One hates to imagine how many detention centers might end up there. Trump is probably eying the island as one big detention center, once he gets his hands on it
Not likely. The hatred for Cuba in my lifetime has always been the fact that U.S. companies basically owned the island until the revolution. The attitude of our government has always been that we want that island back and we want to subjugate its people again.
My husband and I had two massive rock walls built on our property. One was 55 ft long and the other 100 ft. long and both six feet high. He hired a team of five men who specialized in building rock walls and they had it done in about four days. Rocks weighing in at 25-75 pounds each at their largest. All of them immigrants.
It was amazing to watch their skill and speed. Our walls are flawless, beautiful and we were happy to pay a fair market price for excellence.
I never once asked their status. Didn't care.
very well said
I moved back north for the same reason, I couldn’t deal with the stupidity in FL. FL would shut down if all of the immigrants left the state- no one to do the commercial and household cleaning, landscaping, home healthcare, nursing home care, cooking, childcare, crop picking, construction jobs, etc.
I don't think Trump deserves blame or credit for putting bigoted lies into so many heads - he just proudly says out loud what they were already thinking but had become ashamed to say. That is why so many current Trump-followers (like Tucker Carlson and JD Vance and many others) are on record as having opined earlier about his to-the-core immorality. They didn't realize his vile nature would resonate so well with America. Once he proved he could get votes, they all changed their tune.
However, they aren't targeting the immigrant raids in Florida so they may not see the effects there.
Yeah, red-states like Texas and Florida have far greater numbers of illegal immigrants along with much higher crime rates (mostly among the native Texans and Floridians), but they haven't been targeted by Trump's thug army of re-badged "proud boys".
Kind of makes you wonder if the Trump regime is actually full of crap about enforcing immigration laws and that they're actually using the topic of immigrant crime as a pretext to assert authoritarian control of blue states and cities, right?
I don't wonder about it. I'm certain of it.
And to fool the magat cultists into believing that only blue states have immigrant crime as they are easily fooled
Trump's policies would have kept his mother from entering the US as an immigrant as a poor housemaid. Or have deported her when she arrived.
Meanwhile Vance is married to an India-American whose parents migrated from India. It's a bizzare cognitive dissonance that he's in bed with both neo-Nazis and a woman of colour.
Not to mention Stephen Miller’s poor Russian Jewish ancestors, and Steve Bannon’s poor Irish ancestors.
The worst is Melania. Not only an illegal immigrant herself, but also an "anchor baby" who managed to bring her whole family over.
Melania Knavs was not an illegal immigrant. She came on a non-immigrant H-1B visa - which had to be renewed a few times. This type of work visa is for about 80% issued to male workers (under the cap). She got her H-1B in the Tits&Ass exception, but still.
She found a good immigration lawyer and managed to get a work-bound Green Card (these are also mostly issued to males). After five years of presence in the US she requested naturalization.
All US citizens have the right to sponsor their parents for immigration. Which is what she did.
Why someone calls her son Barron an "anchorbaby" I do not understand. Melania had legal status when he was born.
What! Call ICE! They have arrested thousands with better cases than that.
I was calling Melania an "anchor baby", not Barron. But depending on how the process would have worked out if it hadn't been corrupted by politics, Barron might be one too.
My understanding is that Melania came over on a B1/B2 visa. That’s a visitor (tourist) visa that only allows the person to enter the U.S. to visit (or interview). Melania immediately started posing 'a la fresco' -- her day job at the time. Or, as they say in Slovenia, Gola!
Melania Knavs came in 1996 on a B-1/2 visa - the short term visa allowing a foreigner to be in the US for pleasure and BUSINESS. It allows for meetings, presence at trade-fairs, etc. She stayed for about six week and met with photographers, agencies, etc. She did a few try-out shoots apparently. It netted her a job offer. The agency that made it filed for a non-immigrant work visa, the H-1B. She got it for shorter periods than it is normally issued, so had to be extended a few times. (She mentioned that.)
I saw photos from two "risque" shoots for European publications. (In Europe we do not faint when we see a nipple. We also do not have ceilings full of titty lights.) She mainly posed for catalogs for stores etc. as far as I know - catalogs were still big in the 90ies of the previous century.
Much has been made of her Green Card in EB-1 - which is an administrative issue. Having different employers (agencies) means no fixed job, means no sponsoring employer possible. In that case self-petition (in EB-1/A) is allowed. The big advantage: no Labor Certification required - which is the hardest and lengthiest part of EB-3 and EB-2/non-NIW Green Card procedures.
She apparently had a very very good immigration lawyer - which makes all the difference!
I have to admit, your details are better than any of the media sources I checked. It makes me wonder why you are so keyed in to these details. And how you have such access. It's almost as though you have a special channel right into Melania's affairs. Almost.
My dad used to say, "Figures don't lie. But liars figure." In the underworld of gaming the legal system and influence peddling, perhaps the corresponding statement is, "Justice uses laws. But laws sometimes aren't just."
May Melania receive everything she deserves.
(ps ... I've visited Amsterdam. Impressive city!)
Having personal experience with the US immigration system helps. The devil is truly in the details. Melania Knavs managed to beat that sexist (and racist) system, twice. Personally, I was not that lucky. Yes, Amsterdam is a great city. Nice you were able to visit there!
As we have all seen, the tactics of the Trump Administration in deporting immigrants are horrific. There is no current federal law that allows people to sue the federal government for civil liberties violations by federal officers. A Supreme Court case, Bivens, allows civil suits against the federal government, but has been narrowed down to make it close to non-existent. There is a current pending bill in Congress, the Bivens Act, that would allow people to sue the federal government for civil rights violations, just like we can for civil rights violations by local and state police officers. Here's a sample letter you could send to your Congressional Representatives to try to attach a bill to the pending funding of the Department of Homeland Security that would allow civil suits against the federal government.
Every member of ICE and CBP swears an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. If an ICE or CBP officer violates that oath by trampling on the civil rights of any person in America, the Renee Good and Alex Pretti Civil Rights Act (renamed Bivens Act) will allow people to sue the federal government when their civil rights are violated by federal officers, in honor of the memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good and all people who have had their civil liberties violated by federal officers. Congress should not support any more funding for ICE or CBP as long as ICE and CBP officers can continue to openly and violently violate the rights of people in America without consequences.
https://hankjohnson.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/hankjohnson.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/bivens2025.pdf
I like the SIN Act branding. But I might like the Pretti-Good Act branding even more.
Yeah, SIN Act wasn't really appropriate, just Orwellian, changed it back to my original thought. Thanks
Trump and Kennedy will eventually kill millions more with their anti-vax, anti-science, anti-climate change and anti healthcare “policies.” Trump and his billionaire buddies don’t care if we die. Actually they would prefer it.
If millions die who will serve the billionaires their drinks and "wipe their arses. They will have to import "slaves/servants" from Latin America, or even Africa. Roll on the "gilded age".
Check out Spain’s new approach to undocumented workers. They plan to document 500,000 people as they figure it is in Spain’s financial interest
It isnt all being met with cheers. Aragon,Spain region election just saw an increase in election gains for the right wing PP and the far right Vox. Fears about increased competition for housing,jobs and healthcare
Really excellent / clear / short -- no TL;DR for this -- analysis of how utterly self-destructive the vicious and anti-human Trump / Miller immigration "policy" is.
To the three sectors you mentioned, I'm sure the figures for areas like agricultural field work & meatpacking could be equally disturbing -- and even Trumpists would have to be struck by the inflationary impact on food prices their psycho obsessions will insure.
Every day confirms the downward spiral of not just the economy, as you note, but the health of American society.
It would be nice if some of the DC Democrats read what you're saying and combined the negative economic AND human effects this brutal madness is creating.
And an easy way to destroy the bug bear of FDR which has been the dream of the right...Social Security
No; "around 15,000 extra deaths" per year is Miller's way of reducing Social Security's payout. It's a feature, not a bug.
An extra 15,000 deaths a year are not enough for Miller. He wants to add at least two zeroes.
He’s aiming to get there. Odds are there will be fewer vaccinations available for the flu or anything else that disproportionately affects seniors.
I was going to post the same thing! You know, “great minds etc.”
Republicans have been attacking the social safety net supported by the Federal Government, forever. The Republican Universal Health Care plan: You get sick, you die. The senior population for Republicans is a burden that has been in their sights for years. The senior population in other parts of the world is a significant part of the community structure. When in Spain, I noticed the senior population regularly out and about every afternoon in the public squares interacting with their peers and families. In the United States, the senior population is encouraged to disappear into senior communities or assisted living facilities. In the United States, the Republicans encourage the elders to disappear and die. Social Security is just a burden on the working population and payouts are entitlements, not to be confused with benefits saved and paid for by the same seniors when they were working and contributing to their futures.
The Republican plan has always been, you get sick, you die and when you get old, you have a duty to die (this was an idea floated by former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, Democrat, but is fits so well in the current Republican philosophy).
Hi professor Krugman -
Stagnation is exactly what I've been thinking all year - that we went right back into that icky mess of the back half of 2020. (Effectively producing a measurement of how much in 2020 was bad because of a disease and how much of the nasty vibe of 2020 was due to Trump - about half.)
The demographic issues, to my eye, to be about declining economic prospects. The mass unemployment and crappy wage gains of the post-2008 dragged on for years, and the promptly segued into the gross upper class jamboree of 2017-2019. Continued declining birth rates, increases in excess deaths due to overdoses, suicides and poor health care, skidding immigration et al. created the demographic crisis. Increased costs in housing, health cafe and education negated any gains.
Biden came in, did the recovery spending (that the Street and wealthy hated so very very much), and the economy took off like I hadn't seen since the 90's. Putin, MBS and avian flu intervened, so we get an inflation spike, but employment and job growth remained.
Trump comes back in and everything heads straight into the gutter. I'd bet excess death are crawling upwards again. In some sense, Trump IS the demographic crisis. The 2% target and the need to appease the ultra-wealthy are the other part.
The economically right-wing usual suspects wanted to go back, and here we are. The problem being that the 1870's, 80's and 90's featured poor growth and economic stagnation EXCEPT for all the incoming immigration from Eastern Europe and they've gone and cut that route off.
We've got a fantastic speculative bubble that'll end in a 2008/1929/1907-style crash, so I suppose we have that going for us.
elm
trump's raking it in, so somebody is doing well financially
Economic oligarchy hated Biden's Keynesian stimulus and directed investment almost as much as they hated Lina Khan and the threat of higher marginal tax rates.
In a downturn or "crash" criminals are the last to lose. Even if they have to rob the dead and dying.
Are you sure the BLS data you quoted is accurate? After all, trump sacked its previous head because he didn’t like the numbers. Maybe the new boss is releasing fake figures to placate the maniac in charge.
The AI solution: AI replaces all the woke lawyers who then take jobs emptying bed pans in nursing homes…🤔 Wait: does AI pay taxes? Does AI buy goods and services? Immigrants do all of these things;many are (at least we’re) thankful for the opportunity to be in this country.
Greed, not social democracy will destroy (is destroying) our country.
The libertarian-aligned Cato Institute released a study on Feb 3, 2026, that concluded "Immigrants Have Reduced the Deficit Every Year."
https://www.cato.org/blog/cato-study-immigrants-reduced-deficits-145-trillion-1994
It included this nugget:
"Every year since 1994, when data collection began, immigrants have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits from the federal, state, and local governments. The fiscal benefits have continued to rise, reaching their highest level ever in 2023."
So this deportation push is not only causing the job market to stagnate and making elder care less available and less affordable, it is also going to increase government deficits.
While I generally agree with Dr. Krugman I am not sure that illegal immigration has not had a very negative impact on unions in the construction industry. Since the 2008 recession the percentage of unionized workers in that industry has dropped precipitously.
Union coverage began dropping in the 1970s. It isn’t just related to immigration. I worked in a union shop in the trades in the mid 1980s and the interest of Boomers in continuing their union affiliation was dropping like a stone. They bought the short-term thinking of saving union dues the Epstein class had been touting for over a decade. Subsequent generations just accelerated this process.
My dad was a strong union man (carpenter's union) all his life. I used to go with him to an annual honorary lunch they would provide for retired members who had been in the union for a long time. From my personal observation, you (Les) are absolutely right. My dad was among the last to enjoy mostly full employment as a union member. Of course, partly because he was a damn good carpenter and worked so hard and all the contractors knew it.
My dad was a big advocate of apprenticeships (something the carpenters tried hard to support). A carpenter's apprentice could get paid to learn alongside someone who knew what they were doing ... as opposed to going deeply into debt to some school and being expected to learn something from a book or a lecture hall.
Germany ... a country that knows how to work, even though they go off the rails occasionally ... depends on apprenticeship programs for a strong, effective workforce.
I was a computer programmer and unions have NEVER been any part of that scene at all. But an apprenticeship program would have helped a lot. As a middle manager of software development, I was expected to find people who knew what they were doing right out of thin air and pay them a full salary for years while they figured it out. Tech bro's (like, for example, Andreesen) starved in undergraduate programs while they learned pretty much completely on their own and then hit the jackpot with some innovative thing. With Andreesen, it was the first commercial smash hit web browser. I wonder if that experience is what turned Andreesen into Scrooge McDuck. Check out the programmer in the very first "Jurassic Park" movie. Andreesen is almost a perfect match.
In a lot of apocalyptic disaster movies, the world explodes in just a few days or weeks while the main character stands there and watches it happen. I feel like that's happening now.
Most of the jobs on Data Center construction are likely union.
Republicans have been gunning for unions forever.