Braxton Taylor
The first jobs report of President Donald Trump’s second term Friday showed a troubling rise in the unemployment rate for all veterans from 2.8% in December to 4.2% in January, even as the jobless rate for all Americans ticked down from 4.1% to 4.0%.
The monthly employment situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics also showed that the closely watched unemployment rate for the post-9/11 generation of veterans bumped up from 3.9% in December to 4.7% in January.
The first BLS report since Trump took office on Jan. 20 marked one of the few times in recent years that the unemployment rate for veterans exceeded the rate for the general population. The BLS report also stated that the economy added 143,000 jobs in January, which was well below the forecasts of economists at Goldman Sachs and others that 190,000 jobs or more would be added in January.
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Without giving supporting evidence, the White House quickly seized on the BLS report to claim that Biden administration policies had wrecked the economy, but a turnaround was coming under Trump’s plans to cut taxes and regulations, and “Drill Baby Drill” to boost oil and gas production.
The BLS report “reveals the Biden economy was far worse than anyone thought, and underscores the necessity of President Trump’s pro-growth policies,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
“President Trump is delivering on his promise to restore our broken economy, revive small business optimism, create jobs, and ignite a new golden age for America,” Leavitt said.
However, most analysts maintain that the labor market for veterans and the general population has shown resilience in the long recovery from the double-digit unemployment rates of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said on CNBC that “this is still a good labor market,” although “not as hot as a few years ago. The economy is in a good place,” and “we want to keep it there.”
Despite the rising unemployment rates for veterans, “this is a solid report” on the state of the labor market and the economy, Robert Frick, corporate economist for Navy Federal Credit Union, said of the BLS report.
He said the numbers on jobless rates for all veterans and post-9/11 veterans tend to be variable from month to month. “We really haven’t seen a pattern there yet,” Frick said. “It’s something to keep an eye on but nothing to worry about — at least not yet.”
The latest statistics from the BLS show “a pretty big jump” over the course of a month in unemployment rates that “has left a lot of veterans in a very uncertain place,” Will Attig, executive director of the Union Veterans Council at the AFL-CIO, told Military.com in an interview.
“It’s a very big concern as we start to see furloughs and layoffs” at federal agencies, where veterans make up about 30% of the federal workforce, said Attig, a former Army sergeant who served two tours in Iraq.
Related: Veterans Still on a Roll in Jobs Market with Low Unemployment Rate of 2.8% in December
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