What Happens When Cletus Loses His Job?

Notes from the idiocracy.

Before we start: Just a heads-up that today’s Secret Podcast will be a little late. And on Sunday you’ll get a movie club in the Bulwark+ Takes feed with Sarah, Sonny, and me talking about Idiocracy. Spoiler: That movie is only funny if you’re not living it.

And for my neighbors in the city the greater NYC metro area, the presale for our Bulwark Live show on October 11 is live now, here.

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A John Deere dealership on August 26, 2025 in Santa Rosa, California. Farm equipment manufacturer and industry bellwether John Deere is planning to lay off over 200 workers, as the company has seen a slowdown in sales due to customer uncertainty, as the Trump administration's tariffs begin to take effect. The company says that tariffs have cost it $300 million this year and forecasts a full-year tariff impact of nearly $600 million. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

1. Numbers

The totally woke, radical DEIs at the Bureau of Labor Statistics are at it again this morning with the August job numbers and they are . . . not great.¹

The economy added just 22,000 jobs.

I know what you’re thinking: Hey, at least we’re still adding jobs every month.

And fair enough. We ought to cherish positive job growth while it lasts. Let’s dig into the numbers.

For starters, the jobs market is headed in the wrong direction. Job growth keeps trending down and the August number was way under expectations—analysts were expecting 75,000 new jobs. As you get under the hood the report looks even worse.

• The health care sector added 31,000 jobs—meaning that the entire rest of the economy lost jobs. If you don’t work in health care, then employment in your field contracted.

• Trump’s Forgotten Man^TM is taking it on the chin: Mining, oil, and gas production lost 6,000 jobs; manufacturing lost 12,000 jobs and is net -78,000 since Trump took over.

• The June and July numbers have been revised downward by -21,000 and they are now worse than originally estimated. (In June the entire jobs market was net negative, for a loss of 13,000 jobs.)

• Unemployment continues to rise.

Want to see some charts? I understand how complicated economics can be, so I’ll make it simple. When it comes to adding jobs you want the numbers to go up, which is what they did under Joe Biden almost every month of his presidency. Then Trump became president and immediately numbers go down.

When it comes to the unemployment rate you want the numbers to stay low. And unemployment under Biden was historically, unimaginably low. Trump becomes president and all of a sudden, line goes up.

It’s complicated but I’m pretty sure that if I make the arrows big enough, even this guy can understand it . . .