President Donald Trump promised to be a “champion for the American worker,” but his administration’s actions are setting workers without a college degree up for failure. The first year of the second Trump administration resulted in job losses, slowing wage growth, and rising costs for working-class Americans compared with the beginning of 2025. With a difficult labor market, wages that are not rising fast enough, and weaker unions and labor standards, working families are finding it harder to deal with rising costs for essentials including electricity, food, and household appliances. At the same time, the administration is busting unions, cutting the minimum wage, weakening agencies that protect workers, and installing anti-worker judges in the judiciary, which will likely make working-class struggles worse in the future.
This Center for American Progress analysis reviews the most up-to-date data on employment and living costs since the beginning of President Trump’s second term. CAP analysis shows that even after accounting for inflation:
- Overall employment for workers without college degrees fell by 361,000 jobs from January to September 2025.
- 58,000 net manufacturing jobs have been lost from April, when the administration announced “Liberation Day” tariffs, to September 2025.
- Wage growth has slowed from January to September 2025 for workers without college degrees.
- Household electricity costs were 9 percent higher in August than they were in January this year.
- Tariffs have increased prices for household appliances by 5.6 percent, fruit by 5.5 percent, and meat by 6.2 percent from March to November 2025 compared with their pre-tariff price trends.
President Trump and the White House are championing the “Trump effect” on the economy and claiming that workers are doing well under his leadership. But the facts make clear that the working class is suffering under the Trump administration, and without job creation, strong wage growth, or robust worker protections, the administration’s actions will leave the working class defenseless in the face of greater increases in living costs.
The working class in 2025: Fewer jobs, slower wage growth, higher costs
Data from throughout 2025 on employment, wage growth, and living costs such as electricity and household goods tell a story of working-class struggle: the loss of 361,000 jobs formerly held by working-class people and the loss of 58,000 manufacturing jobs since “Liberation Day” tariffs were announced, slowing wage growth, higher electricity bills, and rising prices for food and other essentials.
Since the Trump administration took office in January, 361,000 fewer workers without college degrees have jobs. Figure 1 shows how the number of employed workers without college degrees has changed from January to September 2025, the last month with available data. Although more than 750,000 jobs have been created for workers with college degrees so far in 2025, the working class overall has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, and the least-educated workers have borne the brunt of the decreases in employment.
American manufacturing, typically seen as a route to the middle class for workers without college degrees, has declined under President Trump’s leadership, especially after the administration’s April 2025 “Liberation Day” announcement of signature tariffs on nearly every country. As shown in Figure 2, 49,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost from January to September 2025, and 58,000 have been lost from April to September. Despite the administration’s stated goal to revive American manufacturing using tariffs, American manufacturers are struggling to meet rising costs. The manufacturing decline shows no signs of slowing down: A private estimate of job losses from ADP Research found an additional 18,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in November alone.
Although President Trump inherited an economy with high levels of working-class real wage growth in January, wage growth slowed this year for workers without college degrees. In January 2025, real wages for all workers were growing at 2.1 percent annually. But as shown in Figure 3, wage growth has slowed for the working class since January, with wage growth falling by 0.5 percentage points for workers with a high school education or less and by 0.7 percentage points for workers with associate degrees through September. Real wage growth has declined because workers’ wages are not rising as fast while inflation remains high.
Even though wage growth has slowed, the Trump administration claims a “Trump effect” is producing “higher pay for American workers.” In press appearances, administration officials frequently cite wage figures that do not acknowledge growth has decreased or sometimes do not account for inflation.
Even as employment and wage growth for working-class people have declined, living costs such as prices for electricity and food are increasing. Figure 4 shows that from January to August 2025, the latest month with available data, the real prices that consumers pay for electricity for their homes increased by more than 9 percent. Although the national average in residential electricity price tends to be higher in the summer than in the winter, August 2025’s prices are still 3.1 percent higher than August 2024 prices after accounting for inflation, and analysts have projected an average annual increase of $100 for electricity bills alone for American households in 2025. The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that real prices next year will be even higher.
Prices of staple goods such as food and household appliances have all risen due to tariffs. The administration has raised tariffs to levels not seen in nearly a century, with the result that American consumers are now paying higher prices for imported goods and American manufacturers are struggling with higher costs, which in many cases end up getting passed on to the consumer. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that tariffs will cost the average household $1,700 annually. On top of existing pricing trends, researchers have estimated that, from the beginning of tariff announcements in March through November, prices increased by an additional 9.2 percent for coffee, tea, and cocoa; 5.5 percent for fruit; 5.6 percent for major household appliances; 6.2 percent for meat; and 2 percent for pharmaceutical products compared with the trend in pricing set before tariffs were imposed, from October 2024 to March 2025.
President Trump’s executive actions weaken unions and worker protections when workers need them most
In the future, the economic troubles working-class families face may worsen due to the administration’s attacks on labor and employment laws. Policies to promote unions and raise minimum wage standards, along with federal agencies and judges that enforce the rules on behalf of workers and the public, would all help the working class make ends meet, but the administration’s actions have weakened each of these protections in significant ways.
Unions increase lifetime earnings for workers without a college degree by $1.5 million and increase household wealth for a typical family with a high school degree and no college experience by 90 percent. Unions can also negotiate contracts that soften the effects of layoffs and ensure wages rise faster than inflation.
Despite the benefits of unions to working-class people, the Trump administration has relentlessly attacked unions. Through executive actions, President Trump eliminated collective bargaining rights for more than 1 million federal workers, “by far the largest single action of union-busting in American history” in the words of one labor historian, and has taken steps to weaken the federal agency responsible for ensuring private-sector workers have the right to organize. Lawmakers in Congress have signaled their desire to rein in this union-busting excess: Reps. Jared Golden (D-ME) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) introduced the bipartisan Protect America’s Workforce Act, which would undo the administration’s attacks on federal unions.
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The Trump administration has also attacked the minimum wage, one of the most fundamental protections that American workers have. The Trump administration has proposed a rule that would eliminate minimum wage protections for up to 3.7 million domestic workers, who work in peoples’ homes to provide care and assistance for children and allow aging Americans and disabled people to live independently in their local communities. And, the Trump administration withdrew a proposed rule that would have ended the use of waivers that allow employers to pay disabled workers less than the federal minimum wage. In addition, the administration revoked a Biden-era executive order that had raised the minimum wage for more than 300,000 federal contractors; the Trump administration’s action reduced the allowable minimum wage on federal contracts to $13.30 per hour, lowering the minimum wage by $9,256 annually for a full-time worker.
The administration has weakened other agencies that protect workers as well. It replaced key pro-worker leaders at federal agencies, including at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Department of Labor, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, with former management-side lawyers and appointees with an anti-union history. These agencies have also scaled back anti-discrimination protections and enforcement and reduced penalties for workplace safety violations, all of which mean workers can no longer depend on federal agencies to vigorously enforce labor laws that protect them from discrimination, safety, and wage and hour violations.
A pro-worker president could nominate federal justices with a history of defending workers to give workers a fairer hearing in court. But instead of appointing pro-worker judges to the federal bench, the Trump administration chose several judicial appointees who have acted to eliminate or weaken safeguards for workers. Among President Trump’s appointees to the federal judiciary is Edmund LaCour, who worked to stop minimum wage increases by representing the International Franchise Association in its effort to grant fast food restaurants and other franchises a three-year exemption from raising wages according to Seattle’s $15 minimum wage. As the Alabama solicitor general, LaCour successfully helped defend a law that blocked Birmingham’s local wage increase.
While working in the Missouri attorney general’s office, Maria Lanahan defended the state’s 2018 law that designated most state employees as “at-will,” eliminating unfair termination protections and merit system principles for public sector workers. Similarly, Stephen Chad Meredith successfully defended Kentucky’s “right to work” law, which undermined private sector workers’ right to form, join, and sustain unions. Whitney Hermandorfer represented Tennessee in a legal brief supporting Starbucks in a case that made it significantly harder for the NLRB to stop companies from retaliating against workers during union drives. Joshua Dunlap represented an auto industry association in an ongoing challenge to Maine’s voter-approved but currently stalled “right to repair” law that would lower costs for working families and business owners by making it easier for them to repair their own vehicles or get them repaired at independent repair shops. Dunlap also represented a bank in a class action lawsuit alleging it charged consumers unauthorized overdraft fees.
Conclusion
President Trump talks a good game for workers, but the results from his first year back in office have been quite poor. The administration promised to revive manufacturing by imposing tariffs, but instead delivered a “Liberation Day” that inaugurated a loss of 58,000 American manufacturing jobs and raised prices for basic household goods.
The American worker needed a champion in 2025, but rather than delivering on a promised “golden age” for the working class and American manufacturing, the Trump administration has left workers struggling to find jobs and ill-prepared to deal with mounting costs. The Trump administration’s attacks on unions and the minimum wage, firing of pro-worker leaders at federal agencies, and appointment of nominees with a track record of opposing pro-worker policies will likely make things worse for American workers in the future.