Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick sang the praises of President Donald Trump's economy speaking on Sean Hannity's show on Tuesday night. One former Republican Party strategist tore apart the claim.
Lutnick claimed on Tuesday night that the U.S. economy grew 4.3 percent. "What that means is that Americans overall — all of us — are going to earn 4.3 percent more money. We’re making a raise. It’s a simple way to do it. We’ve got more jobs, lower energy costs and lower interest rates coming.”
“This is the golden age coming,“ he continued. “4.3 percent this quarter means Americans, on average, are making more money, more money in their pocketbooks. That makes for a great Christmas.”
The Bureau of Economic Analysis said that the increase in GDP is likely coming from increased household spending.
"GDP growth is not the same, in any sense, as growth in personal income. 4.3 percent GDP growth does not mean we are all 'going to earn 4.3 percent more money.' I used to assume Lutnick was just a liar. Now I'm wondering if he's just really dumb," James Surowiecki, The New Yorker's former "Financial Page" writer, wrote on X.
The unemployment rate also increased slightly in the quarter more than was expected. The rate is now 4.6 percent, which is the highest it has been since Sept. 2021.
MS NOW host Ali Vitali said Lutnick's comments are a lot like Trump's address last week, "where he said a lot of things that on their face would just be fine if only he could give the accurate depiction of what they were."
Former Republican and host of "The Bulwark's Podcast," Tim Miller agreed saying that even if people ignore the facts from economists, the American people don't connect to a message like that.
"Polls are showing that people are feeling less secure about their own finances, showing that they don't approve of the president's handling of the economy or upset about how inflation has stayed stubbornly high. And, you know, the actual jobs numbers themselves are not showing a lot of job growth," Miller said.
He continued, saying that thus far under Trump the U.S. has "seen pretty much stagnant job growth over the last quarter in the country."
Meanwhile, the GDP numbers, he said, are an "outlier."
"We are seeing some growth in certain sectors, health care and AI, but, like, that's not reflective of what people are thinking [about] the entire economy," Miller said. "And this is one way where this administration, which is so unusual and abnormal in their messaging, in so many ways. This is like a very typical president problem they're running into, which is that the economy — the people don't think the economy is good and they [the Trump administration] want to take credit for it, and they're struggling with how to message it."
He called it no different from what former President Joe Biden was talking about throughout 2024. The difference in that case, however, is that Biden did have success as the economy slowly crawled its way out of the financial crisis that came from the pandemic, CNN reported in January. While Biden was able to shrink inflation, it hasn't countered higher housing costs that exploded under Trump's first administration, the American Enterprise Institute described.
As with Biden, people are not resonating with Trump's message that everything is amazing.
"If you're the president, people aren't happy about the economy, shouting at them and telling them that the economy is good, is not going to help your political standing," Miller closed
How Many Manufacturing Jobs Has Trump Actually Lost?
December 24, 2025
Closed factory outside Huntington, West Virginia. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
In Donald Trump’s imagination, trillions of dollars are being invested in the United States. In the real world, factory construction, adjusted for inflation, was down by more than 10 percent from its year ago level, as of August (the most recent data available). Manufacturing employment, based on the data in the monthly employment reports, was down by 73,000 jobs year-over-year in November.
But the actual story on manufacturing employment may be somewhat worse than the monthly jobs data show. The monthly jobs data are based on the Current Employment Situation (CES), a survey that goes to 120,000 businesses and governmental units every month. While it generally gives a reasonably accurate picture of the economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has to impute jobs gained for new firms that are not included in the survey and for firms that don’t answer the survey because they have gone out of business. This “birth-death” imputation tends to be inaccurate when the economy hits a turning point, like a recession.
BLS corrects for problems in the CES and its birth-death imputation by adjusting the jobs numbers annually with the data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW). The QCEW is based on the records from state unemployment insurance offices. These records include more than 99 percent of all employers in the country, so the count in QCEW will be highly accurate.
BLS will make its annual benchmark revision to the CES data with the release of January data, although that will only be based on QCEW data from March. We will get the benchmark revision through March of this 2025 next in February of 2026.
While we don’t have final data from the QCEW, BLS does publish preliminary data that is more recent. Last week, it posted the data through the second quarter of 2025. This showed a considerably larger decline in manufacturing employment than the CES.
The CES showed a year-over-year decline in manufacturing employment as of June of 102,000. However, the QCEW showed a drop in manufacturing employment of 208,000, 1.6 percent of employment in the sector.
It is important to recognize that these numbers are preliminary. The state unemployment insurance offices did not have full data from all employers when the QCEW was tabulated, so the final data may show a somewhat different story. But based on the data we have to date; it looks like manufacturing is experiencing more of a slump than is generally recognized.
It also is worth noting that the overall employment picture may be somewhat worse than the monthly CES has been showing. The CES showed a year-over-year job gain of 1,534,000 jobs as of June. The QCEW showed a gain of just 420,000 jobs. The benchmark revision that is included with the January jobs report will give us a clearer picture of the jobs situation, at least through March of 2024, but for now it seems as though the jobs story may be somewhat more negative than it now appears. On the plus side, it means productivity is growing more rapidly.
This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.
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