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The doom-and-gloom predictions were wrong again. President Trump’s economy is not just growing, it is roaring. The latest jobs report shows the three-month moving average of monthly job growth hit 188,333 in May, a level that has been exceeded only 41 percent of the time since 1947. Six years after the pandemic recession trough, we are witnessing a jobs expansion unprecedented in the post-World War II economy. The so-called experts who warned of recession and collapse are nowhere to be found now that the numbers have arrived.
What makes this jobs boom remarkable is not just the headline figure. It is what is happening beneath the surface. The foreign-born civilian population dropped by roughly 532,000 over the past year, and foreign-born employment fell by 107,000. Federal government payrolls are down 275,000 from a year ago and 346,000 from their October 2024 peak. This is not growth fueled by cheap foreign labor or government expansion. This is the private sector, reprivatized and re-Americanized, creating opportunity for American workers.
The manufacturing renaissance the establishment media keeps declaring dead is very much alive. Weekly real wages for durable goods workers are up 3.5 percent, a pace not seen consistently since the post-war boom of 1947 to 1969. For context, real weekly gains averaged just 0.2 percent annually in the decade before the pandemic. Nominal weekly paychecks are up 7.4 percent year-over-year, hourly pay is up 5.3 percent, and overtime hours have jumped from 3.7 to 4.0 hours per week. The One Big Beautiful Bill’s overtime tax cut means take-home pay gains are even stronger than the gross figures suggest.
Real durable goods output grew at a 5.8 percent annualized rate in the first quarter, and productivity surged at a 5.5 percent annualized rate. American factory workers are generating dramatically more value per hour, which is what makes these wage gains sustainable rather than inflationary. The Financial Times ran a headline this week claiming Trump’s manufacturing pledge “sputters.” The only thing sputtering is their credibility when confronted with data showing the biggest wage boom for factory workers in over half a century.
The payroll survey and household survey, which often tell conflicting stories, are finally agreeing. Employers reported adding 172,000 jobs in May while the household survey showed employment rising by 149,000, unemployment falling, and the number of job losers declining. In labor data terms, this is practically a consensus that the labor market is not just stable but genuinely strong.
Critics will search for dark clouds in these silver linings. They will note that labor force participation could be higher, that some sectors face headwinds, that tariffs create uncertainty. These are fair points but they miss the larger picture. The American economy is experiencing a genuine restructuring away from the post-Cold War model that prioritized financialization and offshoring over domestic production and worker wages. The results are showing up in paychecks, factory output, and employment figures that confound the pessimists.
What we are witnessing is the early stage of something that could reshape the American economy for a generation. Manufacturing wages rising at rates not seen since the 1960s. Productivity gains that suggest technological advancement and capital investment are paying off. A labor market where American workers face less competition from illegal immigration and more opportunity from domestic investment. This is the economic nationalism that Trump’s critics sneered at, delivered in the data they claimed would never materialize.
The question now is whether this momentum can be sustained. Tariff policies will face continued pressure from globalist interests and multinational corporations who benefited from the old system. The Federal Reserve remains hawkish, watching for any sign of inflation that might justify rate hikes. And the political opposition will continue rooting for economic weakness if they believe it damages the administration.
But for now, the numbers speak for themselves. 188,000 jobs per month. Manufacturing wages surging. Productivity climbing. Foreign-born employment declining while native-born employment rises. Government payrolls shrinking while private sector opportunity expands. This is not the low-growth, low-wage economy we were told to expect. It is something closer to the post-war boom that built the American middle class, and it is happening despite every prediction from the credentialed class that it could not.
The Golden Age they mocked is showing up in the data they cannot ignore.
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