Job growth has slowed sharply — from 2.6 percent at the start of 2019 to 1.3 percent at the end of the year — in so-called middle-wage sectors that include mining, construction and transportation, according to calculations by Nick Bunker, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. That blue-collar slowdown is driving the deceleration of job growth across the United States economy.
Mr. Trump’s policies have also not revived employment in coal mining, as he promised; the sector lost 1,000 jobs nationwide in 2019, according to the Labor Department. Primary metals manufacturing, which includes the steel and aluminum industries that Mr. Trump claimed to have restored with tariffs, shed about 12,000 jobs in 2019.
Employment growth in manufacturing, which Mr. Trump promoted in his speech last year, slowed to fewer than 50,000 jobs in 2019 — the worst rate of his presidency and the second worst of the long recovery from recession.
Mr. Trump nodded implicitly to that slowdown in his speech on Tuesday night. Last year, he claimed, incorrectly, that the United States had created 600,000 factory jobs during his tenure. On Tuesday, he revised that number down to “half a million,” which is the correct figure.
Many economists blame the economy’s deceleration on the trade wars Mr. Trump has waged with China and other countries that send steel, aluminum, washing machines and solar panels to the United States.
Economic growth slowed to 2.3 percent last year, according to data released last month by the Commerce Department. That is a percentage point less than what Mr. Trump’s advisers predicted for the year. Across Mr. Trump’s three years in office, growth has never reached the 3 percent rate that administration forecasters have projected. It has fallen well short of Mr. Trump’s campaign promises of 4, 5 or even 6 percent annual rates.
Independent economists expect only modest growth this year from the initial trade deal that Mr. Trump reached with China and the revamped North American trade pact that he signed last week.
