The 2025 US economy – in charts: rising prices, hiring slowdown, rollercoaster growth
The US economy is thriving, according to Donald Trump: jobs are surging, prices are falling, wages are soaring.The government’s own official statistics paint a more complicated picture of 2025.“The Trump Economic Golden Age is FULL steam ahead,” the president claimed on social media, after growth data for the third quarter of the year – covering July, August and September – was unexpectedly strong.But other key indicators have been far less robust in 2025.If Trump is right, and an unprecedented economic boom is about to take hold, the foundations appear fragile.
The cost of living – and its sharp rise, for many Americans, in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic – was central to Trump’s fight for re-election in 2024.While inflation peaked at its highest level in a generation in 2022, prices remained high.On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to tackle this problem and bring down not only inflation – the rate at which prices rise – but prices themselves.But inflation held firm in 2025, as the White House pressed ahead with Trump’s flagship economic policy.Despite his rhetoric on reducing prices, many economists feared the president’s sweeping tariffs on imports from overseas risked driving them higher.
Price growth fell sharply after policymakers at the US Federal Reserve launched an aggressive campaign to cool the US economy, rapidly increasing interest rates in an attempt to reduce inflation.By the turn of the year, the Fed had already started to bring rates down from their two-decade high.But policymakers, led by the central bank’s chair, Jerome Powell, wanted to tread carefully – and were anxious that cutting rates too aggressively would imperil the progress they had made on inflation.Trump, no careful treader, returned to office demanding a rapid return to low rates to spur economic growth and berating “numbskull” Powell (whom he appointed).His public demands and attacks were coolly brushed off by Powell.
But by the end of the year, Trump had tried to bolster the Fed’s rate-setting board with officials who were more in line with his thinking, dividing opinion on the Fed.Next year, he gets to replace Powell.A post-pandemic surge in jobs growth was already losing steam by last year.Trump tapped into Americans’ frustrations with the economy, promising a “manufacturing renaissance” that would set the stage for another jobs surge.The renaissance has yet to arrive, however, and over the summer, growth in the labor force appeared to stall altogether.
Rather than add jobs, the US economy actually shed them in June and August,And in October, amid the longest government shutdown in history, it lost an estimated 105,000,The unemployment rate – the percentage of the US labor force that is out of work – has meanwhile been rising throughout the year, and in November scaled its highest level since September 2021,The president tried to push back, claiming “the only reason” unemployment had climbed was because the federal workforce had declined – although the federal workforce has fallen 271,000 since January, while the number of unemployed Americans has risen by about a million,“I wish the Fake News would report the 4.
5% correctly,” he added on social media earlier this month, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics put November’s unemployment rate at 4.6%.By the main measure of economic growth – gross domestic product, or GDP – the US economy has endured a rollercoaster year.It shrank in the first quarter, amid an influx of imports ahead of Trump’s expected tariff onslaught, before bouncing back in the second and gathering steam in the third.After growth of 2.
8% in 2024, the US economy is expected to expand by 2% this year, and 2.1% next year.But many economists did not anticipate such a robust GDP reading for the third quarter, which came ahead of the federal shutdown.The last time growth was this strong, during Joe Biden’s presidency, rising prices and patchy labor growth left many struggling to reconcile the headline figures with the day-to-day reality of their lives.Trump is promising a historic economic boom.
Like Biden, he may well find the real task is not just to deliver it – but to ensure Americans feel it, too.
I was there: Red Roses lifted the Rugby World Cup with a roar like no other
Recalling the moment that England’s captain, Zoe Aldcroft, lifted the Rugby World Cup still brings goose bumps. Twickenham was bathed in September sunshine, there was not one empty green seat and when the Gloucester-Hartpury star raised the silverware with gold streamers and fire pyrotechnics, the roar from the crowd was a sound unmatched at any other women’s rugby game I have attended.England had rewarded the home fans, executing the perfect gameplan against Canada, the in-form team who were the underdogs despite knocking out the six-time champions New Zealand in the semi-final. The stadium was sold out with a women’s rugby record of 81,885 creating an electric atmosphere. Future World Cup finals will be sell-outs with a party-feel celebration but I am unsure if anything will be able to replicate the feeling on 2025 final day for everyone invested in women’s rugby
MCG curator concedes pitch went ‘too far’ in favouring bowlers amid criticism over short Boxing Day Test
The MCG’s head curator has conceded staff went “too far” in preparing a pitch that favoured the bowlers too heavily in the Boxing Day Test, saying he was in a “state of shock” while watching the match unfold.But the stadium’s chief executive is standing by the under-fire curator after the Test match between Australia and England finished within two days.Cricket Australia is bracing for a heavy financial loss from the match, only a month after the Ashes opener in Perth also ended with three days to spare. It is the first time the same series has had multiple two-day Tests in 129 years.Millions of dollars in refunds will be handed to patrons who had purchased tickets for day three, which had been sold out and could have attracted a third successive crowd of more than 90,000
PDC world championship: James Hurrell stuns Stephen Bunting in thriller
By the end, the room had gone still and quiet. The air was warm and smelled faintly of spilled pints. The chants of “One Stephen Bunting” had long since died away, and all that was left was one Stephen Bunting: three darts in his hand and no more tricks up his sleeve. No place left to run.And so as James Hurrell pinned tops to win 4-3 and claim the biggest victory of his life, there was just the merest whiff of anticlimax to it all: a seismic shock that also somehow felt like the most natural thing in the world
Tommy Freeman hat-trick topples Bath and sends Northampton to Prem summit
The champions have been mugged at home by the team they deposed. Well, not quite the team. Northampton rung the changes for this match, but the understudies proved the stars of the show to terrorise their hosts. Six tries, a hat-trick for Tommy Freeman and the lead, no less, of the Prem for good measure.The bookies gave Northampton a 20-point head start for this one
Bowen and Curtis bag famous home win in Welsh National with Haiti Couleurs
It is seven years and counting since Native River became the last horse trained in Britain to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup, but the beleaguered home team has conceivably emerged from the first two days of the Christmas programme with not one, but two realistic contenders for next year’s race, after Haiti Couleurs put up a magnificent performance to win the Welsh Grand National here under 11st 13lb on Saturday.Or, as Haiti Couleurs’ connections might prefer it, England has a chance with Friday’s King George winner, The Jukebox Man, and Wales has a shout with Haiti Couleurs, who is trained by Rebecca Curtis in Pembrokeshire and ridden by Sean Bowen, the champion jockey, who was born just down the road from her yard.Bowen gave another demonstration on Haiti Couleurs of what is now his trademark ability to seize the initiative in a race and not let go. His mount was a little free behind the pace on the first circuit, and despite his big weight and the distance still left to travel, Bowen did not hesitate to allow him to stride on into the lead.Haiti Couleurs did not see another rival from there, and there were definite echoes of Native River’s front-running performance under a similar burden in this race in 2016, 15 months before his Gold Cup victory, as the eight-year-old powered clear with O’Connell turning for home and then held him at bay with an unflinching gallop from two out
Bristol survive scare but Newcastle off the mark in Prem as Spencer seals bonus
In the end Bristol had too much. A display of equal parts grit and skill by Newcastle threatened a huge festive upset in the freezing-cold south-west, but two tries by the elusive Louis Rees-Zammit and some classically fluent attacking by Pat Lam’s buoyant team eventually enabled them to overpower their spirited visitors.After the Bears ruined Harlequins’ Christmas at Twickenham last Saturday, sticking 40 points on the London club in Big Game 17, they were widely expected to ease to victory against the Prem’s bottom side, who were yet to muster a bonus point after seven matches. The question seemed to be not if Bristol would win, rather by how many.But the work Newcastle are doing under the head coach, Alan Dickens, now assisted by the former Wales international Stephen Jones, is beginning to bear fruit
The 2025 US economy – in charts: rising prices, hiring slowdown, rollercoaster growth
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