\n<\/p>\n
Over the past year, United States President Donald Trump has unleashed a slew of policies that have upended businesses, supply chains and jobs.<\/p>\n
Yet the US economy seems to be growing at a healthy clip, and the unemployment rate is in a safe zone.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The reality, experts say, is that the stock market boom has helped to mask deeper underlying problems in the economy.<\/p>\n Since taking office, Trump has imposed a range of tariffs on countries, including key trading partners, leading to predictions of inflation skyrocketing, manufacturing screeching to a halt and unemployment soaring.<\/p>\n None of those scenarios came true.<\/p>\n Inflation, while above the Federal Reserve\u2019s target, was a modest 2.7 percent in December.<\/p>\n The unemployment rate was relatively low, at 4.4 percent, last month. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew at 4.3 percent in the third quarter of 2025, the fastest in two years.<\/p>\n \u201cThe shock and awe we anticipated just didn\u2019t materialise,\u201d Bernard Yaros, lead US economist at Oxford Economics, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Yaros said the limited fallout could be attributed to the relative lack of retaliation by other countries and the stock market rally that quickly followed Trump\u2019s dialling back of the steepest tariffs announced on \u201cliberation day\u201c.<\/p>\n Since Trump\u2019s April 2 announcement, the stock market, which is heavily weighted towards the \u201cmagnificent seven\u201d tech companies, has risen nearly 30 percent, boosting Americans\u2019 paper wealth and encouraging households to loosen their purse strings.<\/p>\n Gains in net wealth have driven almost one-third of the rise in consumer spending since the COVID-19 pandemic, Oxford Economics said in a research briefing in October.<\/p>\n At the same time, the gains have not been distributed evenly.<\/p>\n The top 10 percent of earners are now estimated to account for roughly half of all spending, the highest proportion since officials began compiling data in 1989, according to Moody\u2019s Analytics.<\/p>\n \u201cThe gains are going a lot to people in higher income brackets \u2013 they are the ones who have the stock portfolios \u2013 and are going to people in sectors and occupations tied to AI,\u201d Marcus Noland, executive vice president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cBut, these numbers mask the unevenness in the growth in this economy.\u201d<\/p>\n A careful parsing of the data reveals that unevenness. For instance, despite the impressive GDP numbers, that growth is not being accompanied by an increase in hiring.<\/p>\n While hospitality and healthcare added workers last year, retail, manufacturing and construction \u2013 sectors that rely heavily on migrants \u2013 all shed jobs.<\/p>\n As a result of the Trump administration\u2019s mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and tightening of legal migration pathways, the US last year experienced negative\u00a0net migration for the first time in at least half a century, according to a Brookings Institution analysis.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd through this very public and brutal way of going about deportations, they have discouraged illegal immigration, but also intimidated immigrants in the US,\u201d Noland said, adding that the US workforce is projected to see a net decline of two million workers this year.<\/p>\n The \u201cbifurcation\u201d in the US economy is also being felt across the business world, with smaller companies lacking the deep pockets to stockpile inventories or negotiate with suppliers in the face of increased tariffs.<\/p>\n \u201cThe surge in policy uncertainty this year has had an outsize effect on smaller firms,\u201d Oxford Economics said in a November report.<\/p>\n These firms are also seeing little benefit from the boom in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry since revenues have been driven by capital-intensive chip manufacturing and cloud services.<\/p>\n While AI proponents believe the world is on the cusp of huge gains in productivity that could dramatically raise living standards, there are concerns about large numbers of people being put out of work.<\/p>\n \u201cThis could be the new norm \u2013 jobless growth. That\u2019s one reason people are not feeling so great,\u201d Yaros said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile a lot of hype about AI and productivity benefits from AI are still to come, we think that is a risk to the labour market if it continues to hold back hiring.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Over the past year, United States President Donald Trump has unleashed a slew of policies that have upended businesses, supply chains and jobs. Yet the US economy seems to be growing at a healthy clip, and the unemployment rate is in a safe zone. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list The reality, experts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Net decline of workers<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"