May’s jobs report was bad—the economy added fewer than 25,000 jobs—and Trump ran with it, treating it like it was a devastating blow to Obama-Clinton-nomics and proof that his message of American despair was right.
But Trump was quieter about June’s report, which showed that the economy had added nearly 300,000 jobs. July’s report is another sign that the economy is humming: The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Friday that the economy had added another 255,000 jobs.
Trump has been banking on economic anxiety—among other anxieties!—to carry him to the White House and these numbers, when combined with Trump’s total shitshow of a campaign, suggest that the number of Americans who may be susceptible to his rhetoric may be shrinking. At the convention, Trump said “I alone can fix it” in response to, well, every single problem the country faces. But it’s hard to run on fixing a growing economy.
Still, while Gallup’s consumer confidence index may have hit a four-month high, it remains at -10. The last two jobs reports are going to be trotted out as proof that the economy is doing fine, but that’s not what you’d hear from plenty of people in the country. So the Trump campaign probably won’t change his message of economic anxiety because it’s still effective and because the Trump campaign has always been a fact-free environment. And if the jobs report does come up, Trump can just say it’s rigged.