The Institute for Supply Management released the results on Monday of its most recent survey of the manufacturing industry, revealing a loss of jobs for the ninth month in a row.
The trend under President Donald Trump reverses years of manufacturing growth under former President Joe Biden, and experts are blaming Trump’s embrace of increased tariffs for the contraction.
“The manufacturing sector is sick,” Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, told Reuters.
The job losses echo Trump’s weak record on job creation during his first term in the White House. Trump was the first American president since statistics on jobs have been collected to have a net job loss during his term. There were 2.7 million fewer jobs when Trump left office in January 2021, and about 178,000 of those were in manufacturing.
By contrast, Biden oversaw the restoration of the manufacturing sector during his four years in office. When he left office in January the 12.9-million worker strong manufacturing industry had been restored to pre-pandemic levels, only to see losses return under Trump.