Property taxes and schools. Time to separate the vouchers from all of it?

School funding and property taxes are usually important issues in state-level elections in Wisconsin. And a report from today from WalletHub illustrates why, as Wisconsin is back among the top 10 states in property tax rates.

The analysis says Wisconsin’s property tax rate averages 1.42% of value, although I will add that we drop to 16th when looking at property taxes paid on the median-priced home (at $3,792), because Wisconsin’s median home value of $266,500 is below the nationwide median of $332,700.

Of course, if your community has passed a referendum and/or has a high amount of property value, your property taxes may be quite a bit higher than the $3,792 median that WalletHub lists for Wisconsin (raises hand).

On the positive side, Wisconsin is among the 25 states that don’t have a property tax for vehicles, unlike lower home-tax Indiana (average assessment is $350 there), and several Southern and Western states.

Source: WalletHub

But even though we have no vehicle tax, we have high property taxes in Wisconsin, and a new lawsuit filed by several school districts and education organizations helps to explain why. Public school districts have less state assistance to operate their schools, while local revenues (property taxes, mostly) have had to make up some of the difference

In the 1999–2000 school year, public school district revenue broke down as 53.7% state, 41.6% local, and 4.7% federal. By 2023–24, the most recent year of available data, that mix had shifted to 45% state, 43% local, and 12% federal.

The state share notably declined, beginning in earnest after the 2008 recession, and has never fully recovered. Meanwhile, the local revenue share has increased, and the federal contribution has nearly tripled, driven largely by temporary pandemic relief funding.

In the 2 years since then, COVID-era federal assistance has declined significantly, but General Aids from the state were not increased for 2025-26 by the WisGOP Legislature, resulting in over 70% of Wisconsin districts having less state aid this year vs 2024-25. As a result, even more of K-12’s costs are going onto the property tax.

The lawsuit also mentions two other reasons that Wisconsinites are paying higher property taxes for K-12 schools.

Had revenue limits kept pace with inflation since the 2009–10 school year, today school districts would receive an additional $3,380 in revenue per-pupil.

Making matters worse, the Legislature has placed a significant additional strain on public education by creating and greatly expanding a competing system of largely unregulated and unaccountable voucher programs for private schools (“voucher schools”). These schools have expanded from educating 341 students in 1990 to over 59,000 students in the 2025–26 school year.

The insufficient revenue limits have led schools to go to referendum to exceed those revenue limits in order to keep operating at the same (or even reduced) level of services. And outside of Milwaukee, school vouchers for private schools are funded by taking away funds from the public school district that the child lives in. Even if the child never attended a day of public school in the district.

That’s $394 million being reduced from K-12 public schools to pay for these voucher programs, and also results in up to $394 million in additional property taxes to make up the difference.

Which is why I think this question in the latest Marquette Law School Poll of Wisconsinites is kind of BS.

This is a false choice, because the correct answer is “BOTH”. It’s wrong to say that the only way we have to raise funding for our community schools is through property taxes. If we added state aids, we could have added resources for the schools without having to raise property taxes.

And even if we don’t outright ban vouchers (we’ll file that idea away for the future), there is no reason that we need to be forcing property tax increases as a result of that program. Make the voucher program fully state funded, and stop penalizing home owners when we give money to parents so their kids can separate themselves from the schools in their community.

Based on what the Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated earlier this month, making the state pay for all $394 million of the costs of vouchers would entirely cover Governor Evers' veto-based increase of $325 per pupil for Wisconsin school districts, and allow for $140 million in property tax relief on top of that. Seems like a win-win to me!

Given that state aid to schools are the largest cost of state government, a lot of other areas of the state budget are at least indirectly affected by what happens with how we choose to fund K-12 education. But given that we will have a new Governor, new Assembly Speaker, and both houses of the Legislature up for grabs with fair maps for November, it sure seems like it's a great time to talk about how we can change from a status quo System that isn't working for either public schools or property taxpayers.

Trade and tariffs in 2025 - this really didn't work, did it?

As you may have heard, the US Supreme Court told Donald Trump on Friday that he had no right to go out and slap tariffs on country without having Congress pass a law allowing him to do so. And naturally, Trump responded by whining like a bitch and planning to put in new worldwide tariffs of 10%.... wait, 15% (go ahead and try, old man).

In light of that, we got information about what happened to the flow of imports and exports in 2025 in reaction to Tump's tariff plans, and as you'll see 2025 didn't have a very different trade deficit than 2024, and December saw the trade deficit go up compared to the lows of October.

Trade deficits were volatile throughout 2025 as importers responded to President Trump's shifting tariff announcements, which have upended the global landscape but haven't significantly dented the US trade deficit, at least so far.

The data released Thursday by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis also provided an annual tally for 2025, totaling trade in both goods and services at $901.5 billion. The total for 2024, the last year of Joe Biden's presidency, was $903.5 billion…. The new monthly reading, delayed by the recent government shutdown, was the second consecutive increase following October's trade deficit of just under $30 billion — the lowest figure seen since 2009, which Trump and his aides often touted.

The new December reading saw US imports fall by about $5 billion to $287.3 billion, while imports jumped by $12.3 billion to $357.6 billion. Goods imported in 2025 rose overall, despite Trump's tariffs, to a total of about $3.4 trillion last year.

I do think it's important to note that how we got to that deficit of just over $900 billion is very different when comparing 2024 and 2025.

That ballooning deficit for the first part of 2025 reflects front-running that American businesses did, trying to bring in more imports before Trump announced tariffs on those products, and then backing off after Trump made his infamous “Liberation Day” announcement in April.

Meanwhile, the value of US exports were larger in every month of 2025 than the same month was in 2024, even as some countries put on retaliatory tariffs on US products.

So that’s good news. I would also guess that the 10% decline in the US dollar in 2025 contributed to this increase in exports, since it makes American projects cheaper overseas.

In looking at the figures, December 2025’s trade deficit of $70.3 million was nearing the monthly amounts that we had for much of 2024, which ranged between $71 billion and $81 billion in every month between April and November. But for now, I’ll say that we are on trend for a lower trade deficit in 2026, with exports going higher in 2025 and imports being lower in the second half of 2025. That would seem to indicate the tariffs are working if you only care about reducing the country’s trade deficit.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the average American might be better off as a result of that smaller trade deficit. It’s indisputable that tariffs raise prices from what they otherwise would have been, which is where I remind you that the New York Fed said this month that 90% of Trump’s tariffs were paid for by American companies and consumers.

In addition, employment in manufacturing continued to slide in 2025, so businesses weren’t onshoring to the US as a result of tariffs (ignore any media events you see about “future activity”, read the numbers).

Lastly, tariff revenue offset some of the extra deficits caused by Trump Tax Scam 2.0 and related increases in spending on ICE and the military (and grifting) in Trump's first year. But it plateaued in the second half of the year has been declining in recent months, as imports dropped and some tariffs were removed.

Other than bringing in a little more revenue (but nowhere near enough to make up for tax cuts or increased spending elsewhere), what have Trump's tariffs actually helped our economy or standard of living? I can't see it, likely because there is no strategy to help American manufacturing or offset the extra costs of these policies for everyday Americans. But the senile fool in the White House is going to screech and double down on it anyway, and the gutless GOPs in Congress aren't doing anything to stop it.

So now we have to waste a lot more time and effort to tell them "NO, DO YOU NOT GET IT?", and to get the hundreds of billions of dollars back that were taken away by this idiocy (and the Supreme Court's dawdling on the issue) in 2025. And it is infuriating to us in the non-elite, reality-based world.

It may not be recession, but economic growth got worse in year 1 of Trump 2.0

Before the markets opened on Friday, we got a surprisingly lousy report on economic growth for the end of 2025.

New data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis published on Friday showed the economy grew at an annualized rate of 1.4% in the final three months of 2025. Economists had expected GDP to grow at an annualized rate of 2.9% in the fourth quarter…..

In its release on Friday, the BEA said that "the deceleration in real GDP in the fourth quarter reflected downturns in government spending and exports and a deceleration in consumer spending that were partly offset by an acceleration in investment."

Underlying spending trends, however, remained solid, with real final sales to private domestic purchasers — the sum of consumer spending and gross private fixed investment — increasing 2.4% in the fourth quarter, compared with 2.9% in the third quarter.

Within that 2.4% rise in consumption, however, a sharp divide emerged in the quarter between goods and services, with services spending rising at a 3.4% rate and goods spending actually falling 0.1%.

The report also continued to show the impact the AI build-out is having on economic growth, with spending on information processing equipment contributing 0.65 percentage points to economic growth in the quarter. Among private fixed investment, which rose 2.6% during the quarter, spending on intellectual property products rose at the fastest rate, 7.4%.

That’s quite a bit different than what the Atlanta Fed was predicting ahead of the release of the GDP report, although the ATL Fed caught the downward trend as more data came in over the last month.

Then you look at the numbers underlying the Atlanta Fed’s models, and some of their stats match up. It’s the volatile “non-core” sectors where the differences show up.

President Trump is claiming that the government shutdown of October and November is the reason behind the decline in government spending. And certainly the main divergence between the ATL Fed’s 3.0% projection of GDP growth and the official report of 1.4% was a drop in Federal government spending, taking off 1.15% from Q4 growth. But then you look at the most recent Treasury Statement, and Federal government expenses didn’t seem to slow down in Q4 at all. So there may be some upward revisions to growth still to come.

I’d even argue that a bad GDP report isn’t necessarily bad for what TrumpWorld wants, since they and their tech oligarch funders are so strung out on debt that they need the lower interest rates that would come in reaction to a slower economy. But a different report on income and spending may have wrecked those plans, because it showed inflation was on the rise as 2025 ended.

Underlying U.S. inflation increased more than expected in December, and signs are pointing to a further acceleration in January, which would strengthen ‌expectations that the Federal Reserve would not cut interest rates before June.

The personal ‌consumption expenditures price index, excluding the volatile food and energy components, rose 0.4% after an unrevised 0.2% gain ​in November, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis said on Friday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the so-called core PCE price index climbing 0.3%. In the 12 months through December, core PCE inflation advanced 3.0% after increasing 2.8% in November….

The [overall] PCE price index increased 0.4% in ​December after rising 0.2% ​in November. [Overall] PCE inflation increased 2.9% year-on-year after gaining 2.8% in November.

The government also reported that consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of economic activity, rose ​0.4% in December after increasing ‌by the same margin in November. When adjusted for inflation, consumer spending gained ​0.1%, setting it on a slow growth trajectory heading into the first ​quarter.

That sure sounds like stagflation to me, and it shows that at the end of 2025, there was little difference in how the economy was doing vs the end of 2024 (when enough low-info voters put Donald Trump over the top in hopes of improving the economy). And in fact, the economy was likely slower than what we had in Joe Biden's last year.

Year-over-year Change

Real GDP
Q4 2024 +2.4%
Q4 2025 +2.2%

Real Personal Consumption Expenditures
Q4 2024 +3.4%
Q4 2025 +2.2%

PCE Price Index
Q4 2024 +2.6%
Q4 2025 +2.8%

Core PCE Price Index
Q4 2024 +3.0%
Q4 2025 +2.9%

Job Growth
Dec 2024 +1,459,000 (+0.9%)
Dec 2025 +181,000 (+0.1%)

In addition, there was a significant drop in personal saving by American consumers over the last half of 2025, as incomes stagnated while prices kept going up.

Seems like the end of 2025 indicates that we were in a slow-growth economy where businesses are taking growth in productivity for themselves, and not adding jobs or doing much to raise pay. And given that consumer sentiment stayed at depressed levels in February, don’t count on consumer spending to be that strong for Q1 2026 either.

And I sure wouldn’t expect SCOTUS striking down Trump’s tariffs to do anything for affordability or to lower inflation. The businesses that paid the tariffs aren’t getting their money back any time soon, and they sure as hell aren’t going to lower the prices that consumers have to pay. They’ll just pocket the profits and move on.

After letting LeMahieu back in, WisGOPs double up tax bills. And the numbers don't add up

After a week where Senate GOP Leader Devin LeMahieu complained he was being left out of a possible tax cut and school funding deal between Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Governor Tony Evers, apparently Dev is now back in the game, with the GOP Legislature now working out their own deal.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, sent a letter to the governor Feb. 16 outlining their proposal to address soaring property taxes and rising costs with the state's proposed $2.5 billion surplus.

"This is a generous, good-faith attempt to achieve our mutual goals of limiting the property tax impact caused by your misguided 400-year veto, helping families address rising costs, and ultimately doing what is best for the people of Wisconsin," LeMahieu and Vos wrote in the letter first reported by WisPolitics.

First of all, if the WisGOPs are blaming Evers for putting resources in K-12 schools as a reason property taxes went up, then they don't get to claim "good faith". Because the only reason we have higher property taxes for schools is because THE GOP REFUSED TO PUT ANY STATE AIDS TOWARD THE SCHOOLS THAT WOULD HAVE REDUCED PROPERTY TAXES.

But let's look at the WisGOP plan is. It appears to be a mish-mash where they added in parts of the property tax cut plan Evers and Vos were trying to work out, and then also put in the income tax rebate LeMahieu and other GOP Senators were asking for.

The GOP proposal includes:

$500 million to put toward the school levy tax credit, funding that would allow the state to offset property taxes.

$1.5 billion for income tax rebates ($1,000 for married filers and $500 for single filers).

$200 million in funding for special education costs.

$30 million to fund a grant program for businesses and households that were affected by flooding in 2025.

$1.4 million for an educator tax deduction (up to $300 of educator expenses per year per educator).

So a little more than $2.2 billion in all. The total price tag is important, because all of this would get rid of the entire $2.5 billion surplus, and leave a smaller cushion for the next 16 months of the state budget than what was expected before the Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected another $1.5 billion in available funds last month.

So barely 1/4 of a billion dollars of cushion to take care of unexpected expenses that may come up between now and June 30, 2027. And we already are projected to need another $213 million for Medicaid, let alone what other complications that Trump/GOP austerity is going to push down to Wisconsin state government. And if the flat job growth we have in both Wisconsin and America turns into an outright recession, we're going to need other moves to keep the budget in balance, with the next Governor facing a significant structural deficit in the budget upon taking office.

And while I approve of the idea of a tax rebate as a one-time giveback, I didn't realize the price tag of $500/$1,000 was $1.5 billion. Seems like it should be smaller, with $250/$500 allowing for a lot of other things to be put into play. And while increasing the School Levy Tax Credit by nearly 40% will nearly double the $254 million in additional revenue limit that K-12 districts can use for next year, it also gives bigger benefits to higher-value homes, and doesn't do anything to deal with inequalities in funding between schools like General School Aids do.

And other tax cuts working their way through the Legislature make these other tax cuts even less affordable. A "no tax on tips" bill has already passed the State Senate (cost $53.2 million in Fiscal Year 2026), and the Joint Finance Committee just signed off on a bill that would have no taxes for overtime pay, for a cost of nearly $326 million next year. So that would put us another $379 million in the hole if both of those bills became law.Because the numbers don't add up, so if WisGOP tries to pass all of these items in one swoop instead of splitting up these provisions into separate bills (as I bet they will), Wisconsinites are likely to get nothing, with Evers being able to blame the WisGOPs for being irresponsible.

This last-minute tax cut mismash will look especially stupid if the WisGOPs shrug and decide to go on a 10-month vacation without working with the Guv to get a deal done. And while these WisGOP dweebs think they've pulled a fast one by making it more likely Evers has to veto the entire $2.2 billion package, they're more likely to be giving yet another reason for Wisconsinites to throw them out of power, and let the Dems have a chance to put in a new and better way of funding schools and cutting property taxes.

Media may say it was a good month for INFLATION WATCH. But maybe not in the Real America

Another report on INFLATION WATCH hit on Friday, and on the surface, it showed price growth was moderating in the first month of 2026.

Inflation rose just 0.2% in January from December and fell to 2.4% on an annual basis. Both readings were less than anticipated, in a positive sign for consumers.

Broadly, economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected inflation overall to have risen by 0.3% in January. On an annual basis, the expectation was that inflation would be tracking at 2.5%.....

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that the price of housing “was the largest factor” in the increase for the month, rising 0.2%. The same went for the “food at home” category, which tracks grocery prices.

The price of energy was among the biggest drops in January, falling 1.5%.

Core inflation, which strips out volatile categories, was also right in line with expectations. That could help bolster the argument that recent rate cuts and actions by the administration are working to bring inflation under control after it soared to 3% in September last year.

The year-over-year trends certainly seem to be going in the right direction, even if prices are still rising.

But if price pressures are easing, why are people so upset about things these days? Part of it might be because prices went up in Real America in January more than what the headline numbers would tell you. That's because the models that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has an expectation that prices will go up in January, and lowers the "official" seasonally-adjusted numbers in their CPI report.

In this chart, the change on the left is the change in actual prices, while the the change on the right is what gets reported after the BLS's seasonal adjustment.

Of course, those seasonal adjustments will inflate some of those same categories later this year, and the year-over-year increases do show some moderating. But I'll also note that the decrease in gas prices is certainly reversing in February, after the Trump Administration's shenanigans in Venezuela and the occasional sabre-rattling against Iran (oil companies can't survive with barrels under $60, you know). And the usual Springtime rise in gas prices seems to be happening earlier this year.

One other item I want to point out on the CPI report is that the costs for health insurance might not reflect what everyday Americans are paying. It lists the cost of insurance as only 1% of a typical month's expenses, while actual health services are another 6% of total expenses. These services also seem to reflect "full price" of those services, but does not account for the cost share between any subsidies that pay for those services and insurance. For a lot of Americans, the assistance they got went down at the start of the year, and they paid more for premiums and services, but that reality isn't showing up in many of these stats.

Bottom line - despite the good headlines that you may have seen on Friday in regards to the Consumer Price Index report, American consumers are still facing higher prices, and while the amount of increase may be moderating, the cost of living is still a significant problem for normal Americans. And flattening wage and job growth is an extra complication that wasn't there in previous years.

Surplus plans come up. Property tax cuts? Schools? REBATES?

In the last few days, there's been quite a bit of discussion at the Wisconsin Capitol in regards to what should be done with the state's new $2.5 billion budget surplus. This includes the release of an email where Governor Evers told Assembly Speaker Robbin’ Vos about a K-12 schools and tax cut deal that he would be OK with.

The email shows Evers’ staff offered to sign one bill that includes the guv’s priorities of $200 million to increase reimbursements for special education and $450 million for general school aid, which would drive down how much districts can raise through property taxes to cover their costs.

In exchange, his staff offered support for putting $550 million into the school levy tax credit, which offsets some of what homeowners would otherwise pay in property taxes for schools. The offer also included $97.3 million toward exempting cash tips….

According to the email, GOP leaders had rejected Evers’ call to make reimbursing special education expenses sum sufficient.

The state budget included a nearly $505 million increase in special education through a sum certain appropriation. That means that the amount of money for special education aid is capped and districts will receive a prorated amount to reimburse their costs from that pot of money.

When the budget was signed, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected the boost in state money would result in a reimbursement rate of 42% in 2025-26 and 45% in 2026-27. But DPI notified districts in November that the interim proration rate for 2025-26 is 35% after costs in 2024-25 increased by 9% rather than the expected 4%.

Do we got a deal?

And Vos indicated this week that he and the other Assembly Republicans might be OK with something similar to that package. To the point that Vos backed away from demands that Evers get rid of his "400-year veto" guaranteeing an increase in available resources for public schools.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, reiterated Feb. 11 that he will not make a relief package contingent on a repeal of Gov. Tony Evers' budget veto that provided school districts with revenue increases for four centuries – something Vos previously said would have to be "part of the discussion."

"Look, I think the 400-year veto is wrong. But I also think that the most important thing for us is to make sure that the surplus is given back to people to help deal with rising property taxes, rising electric costs and all the associated things dealing with inflation," Vos told reporters, adding that he won't require a veto repeal "as the only way that we get a deal."

Vos said his office had a "good meeting" with Evers' staff the previous day to look for areas of agreement as they seek to use some of the state's projected $2.5 billion surplus to offset soaring property taxes.

As I’ve said before, it’s silly for Republicans to try to hold hostage the $325 per student increase for K-12 schools, since Evers won’t change that total for next year, and because a future Governor and Legislature can change the amount of schools’ revenue limits whenever they agree to do so.

So Vos seems to be throwing that tactic away, and (at least publicly) wants to be seen working with Evers on the property tax reductions. But it looks like Vos’s counterpart in the other house of the Legislature has his group going in a different direction.

The same day, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said Senate Republicans had a "great caucus" on the issue, working on "fine-tuning" where its members stand.

LeMahieu told CBS 58 earlier in the day that "in order to do anything for school funding or running it through school aids, we're going to need to repeal the 400-year veto."

In addition, LeMaheiu and other Senate Republicans have a different idea for how to use the surplus funds.

Senate Bill 1 will provide Wisconsin families with rebate checks up to $1,000.

Madison- Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) made the following statement regarding the introduction of Senate Bill 1, which will provide married-joint income tax filers with a $1,000 income tax rebate and provide all other filers with a $500 income tax rebate:

via GIPHY

I’m not going to give you the spin LeMahieu is giving as to why, but I do have a question. Did Senate GOP staffers check out this post I made? (hilarious on multiple levels if true) :P

The income tax rebate bill is already set for a committee hearing on Thursday. It looks like the rebate would be based on who filed in Wisconsin in tax year 2024, and here’s how people would get that money.

The department of revenue shall identify the taxpayers who are eligible to receive a rebate...and the amount of payment due each taxpayer. The department of revenue shall certify the allowable amount of the rebate to the department of administration for payment by check, share draft, or other draft drawn from the appropriation account under s. 20.835 (2) (cd). The department of administration shall make the payments under this paragraph no later than September 15, 2026.

The department shall establish procedures for taxpayers who do not receive a rebate or receive less than the full amount for which they are eligible under this subsection to file a claim for payment by December 31, 2026. The department of revenue shall establish a portal on its Internet site for these individuals to file a claim for payment. No taxpayer may make a claim for a payment under this paragraph after December 31, 2026.

Getting the payments out by Sept 15 would mean Wisconsinites would get a benefit faster than having to wait for the effect to show up on their property tax bills in December, which is why I’ve advocated for this type of rebate - although I’d base it on 2025 tax bills vs 2024, unless that proves too difficult to get that information lined up in the time period between May 2025 and Sept 2025.

The drawback of using a rebate is that none of the state funding goes to school districts, which doesn’t solve the concern about how to keep increasing amounts of property taxes from paying for K-12 education. Which means 2026’s property taxes would still be set up to be high, and it still (correctly) portrays Senate Republicans as a group who don’t want to fund community schools.

It’s interesting to see Senate GOPs go out on this island of income tax rebate in opposition to both the Assembly GOP and Governor Evers, and I’d encourage Senate Dems to try to split the difference – agreeing with some kind of income tax rebate while also adding some state funding to K-12 schools. It’s also always fun to see Dweeby Robbin’ Vos get faced by his own party members in the Senate, and that’s all the more reason for Dems to get their names on possible tax relief packages, to be seen as a part of the solution while the GOPs flail around.

With maybe a month to go in the session before the GOP adjourns for the Legislature’s 10-month paid vacation, let’s see if something gets worked out. And let's see if the WisGOPs wreck the chances of any tax relief by fighting amongst each other, which would make it even more likely that they’ll have no power at all at the Capitol this time next year.

Don't buy the headline. The job market still sucks for most of America

Wednesday’s US jobs report was heavily anticipated for two reasons. Not just because it would give us a look at how the jobs market started 2026, but also in how we would find out more information about 2025’s job situation. That’s because the January jobs report also includes the benchmark revisions for the previous year, and a preliminary revision from last Summer indicated that there would be a reduction in earlier job growth of more than 900,000 jobs through Spring.

Sure enough, the revisions were sizable for 2025, resulting in already-weak US job growth to sink near zero.

…[the Bureau of Labor Statistics] shaved off more than 400,000 jobs from the 2025 employment gain, leaving the U.S. with just 181,000 new jobs in 2025, compared to an initially reported 584,000.

The preliminary revision of 2025 jobs data is part of an annual process. Each year, the agency recalculates the previous year’s employment changes based on new federal data on the U.S. population. In 2025, BLS subtracted almost 600,000 jobs from the 2024 total employment gain.

Trump administration officials sought to downplay the importance of the January jobs numbers in the days leading up to the report’s release; top White House economists attributed an employment slowdown under Trump to the administration’s mass deportations, which they say lower the number of jobs the U.S. is required to create.

The 15,000-a-month average for last year is the worst non-COVID figure for job growth since the Great Recession was happening in 2009. And as you can see, most months of 2025 were revised down.

But don’t worry, those 2025 troubles are all behind us, because the January jobs report was awesome!

The US economy added an estimated 130,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate ticked down a tenth of a percentage point to 4.3%, according to new Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

That’s far stronger than the 75,000 net gain economists had projected, and it’s only 51,000 jobs shy of the entirety of the jobs created in 2025, BLS data shows….

“The labor market appears to be stabilizing,” Heather Long, chief economist with Navy Federal Credit Union, told CNN. “That’s the first step to recovery.”

January marked the strongest month of job creation since December 2024.

Uhh, let’s hold off onto whether this portends a great 2026 for the jobs market, and not just because 130,000 jobs added in a month would have been a subpar number for most of the last 15 years. Once you look closer at the numbers, it’s clear that this isn’t that good of a jobs report.

The first way this jobs report masks an overall still-lousy jobs market is because many more people in January weren’t working compared to December. It’s just that the dropoff wasn’t as much as what the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects for that time of the year.

Job change Dec 2025 – Jan 2026
Seasonally adjusted +130,000
Not seasonally adjusted -2,649,000

So the “growth” merely reflects lower-than-normal post-Holiday and cold-weather layoffs. Which we might expect given that unemployment claims were still low through mid-January, and that all those layoffs that were announced last month won’t result in people losing their jobs until later this year.

The second reason that the January jobs report isn’t as great as a six-figure gain would indicate is because of how lopsided it is toward a small number of sectors.

That “all other jobs” category accounts for nearly 4 out of 5 jobs in this country. Which means 80% of American workers are seeing no job gains at all in the sector they work in.

An absurd amount of the job gains coming from health care and social assistance has been a trend for well over a year, but that hot streak will likely be threatened as more Americans lack health insurance in 2026 and ICE likely harms an industry where 1 out of 6 workers are immigrants.

And that 33,000-job gain in construction isn’t from a boost in activity as much as it is a lower-than-normal January decline of 213,000 jobs. So let’s see if that reverses in the coming months if Springtime construction hiring doesn’t meet modeled targets (especially with Trumpist ICE raids may well hamper the availability of a sizable portion of that workforce).

The January jobs report reiterated that most of our real economy was struggling as 2026 began. And average hourly wage growth is still mediocre at 3.7% over the last 12 months, (although there was a not-bad 0.4% increase for the first month of the year). Until we see that wage growth start growing on a consistent level , and until more than 1/5 of the US jobs market starts seeing any kind of significant growth, I don’t see why consumers would stop being so down on the economy.