Did you notice on March 6 that Donald Trump didn’t brag about his so-called great economy? The reason: The number of jobless people jumped by 203,000 in February to 7.571 million. That’s also 467,000 more than in February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s second term.

Businesses claimed to shed a net of 92,000 jobs in February—when the economy really needed to create at least 93,000 new jobs that month, outside analyst Jed Kolko posted on the Economic Policy Institute’s website. It didn’t.

The unemployment rate rose slightly, too, from 4.3% this January to 4.4% this February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. And that wasn’t the only piece of bad economic news in the numbers.

What BLS didn’t say, Kolko did; The economy must create an average of 120,000 new jobs monthly just to keep up with growth of new people entering the labor force. In February this year it needed to create 93,000.

Add the 203,000 more unemployed in February to the 93,000 new jobs needed that month to keep the jobless rate from rising, and you come up with a gap of 296,000 jobs. And the big reason it isn’t wider isn’t the Trump slump. It’s his mass jailings and deportations of workers, who otherwise would be seeking work, Kolko calculated.