The United States has lost 42,000 manufacturing jobs since April 2025, as businesses have slowed down hiring and tightened their budgets in the face of costly Trump administration tariffs.

According to an analysis released by the Center for American Progress (CAP) think tank on September 9, the U.S. shed 12,000 manufacturing jobs in August alone. The CAP blames those losses on President Trump's tariffs, which the think tank says have harmed working-class jobs that are "overwhelmingly filled by men, who have been struggling with rising unemployment in recent months."

"Despite Trump’s claims that his policies will reignite the manufacturing industry in the United States, his policies have achieved the opposite," the CAP's report reads.

Read More: The Fatal Flaw Behind a U.S. Manufacturing Revival

Manufacturing wages have also stagnated since the announcement of Trump's so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs in April. Between March and April of this year, the average hourly earnings for U.S. manufacturing workers fell by eight cents, marking the first month-to-month decline for the sector's wages since January and February 2022. Several companies have blamed tariffs for a flurry of recent job cuts as well. That includes John Deere, which announced in August that it would be laying off nearly 240 workers across three U.S. plants, and automakers who combined for nearly 5,000 job cuts in July, according to a report released on July 31 by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

A separate analysis released by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth in late-July warned that tariffs could drive up U.S. manufacturing costs by as much as 4.5%. Others have voiced concerns over the impacts the Trump administration's aggressive approach to deportations could have on the manufacturing sector, especially in the wake of an ICE raid on a Georgia Hyundai factory, where 300 South Koreans were arrested. Speaking at a September 10 press conference, South Korea's President Lee Jae Myung said that moving forward, the country's companies will be "very hesitant" to invest in U.S. manufacturing as a direct consequence of the raid.