Economy loses 23,000 Jobs in July
San José, CA – On Friday, August 7, the Bureau of the Labor Statistics (BLS) of the Department of Labor reported that the U.S. economy had lost 23,000 jobs in July. This was much lower than what economists had estimated, which was of a gain of 80,000 jobs. To make matters worse, revisions to the reports for May and June showed that 100,000 fewer jobs were created than reported earlier.
While a different survey of households showed that the unemployment rate fell from 4.2% in June to 4.1% in July, this was mainly due to unemployed workers giving up their job search, which meant that they are no longer counted as unemployed. The measure of people working and unemployed, called the Labor Force Participation rate, fell to 61.4, the lowest level in 50 years, not counting April and May of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was gripping the country. All in all, more than a million workers have dropped out of the labor force over the last year.
The fall in the Labor Force Participation Rate was concentrated among oppressed nationalities. The biggest drop in the LFPR was among Asian Americans, where it fell by a whole point. The LFPR among African Americans fell by 0.6, while there was no drop at all in the LFPR among white Americans.
One reason for people giving up on the job search was that for the last six months, more than one in four unemployed had been out of work for six months or more. This is a record high percentage for a time not following a severe recession such as 1981-83, 2007-2009, and 2020 when the unemployment rate topped out near or above 10%.
Job losses were led by job cuts in public schools, where almost 50,000 jobs were lost in July. While some said this was because of summer vacation, the report was adjusted to account for this. Compared to a year earlier in July of 2025, public schools still had 80,000 fewer employees. The next biggest job loss was in leisure and hospitality, which includes restaurants, hotels and entertainment. These industries lost 40,000 jobs in July.
Despite the bad economic news, the stock market rose, with all the major indices (the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard & Poor’s 500, and the NASDAQ) all up for the day. Just another example of when bad news for workers becomes good news for the capitalists and rich of Wall Street.