The experts spent months predicting collapse. The media spent weeks running stories about tariff uncertainty, supply chain disruption, and consumer confidence cratering. The left spent the entire year insisting President Donald Trump’s economic policies were going to destroy the middle class.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett appeared on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday and laid down the numbers that make every doomsday prediction look embarrassing: 83,000 construction workers are currently building factories in America — a figure the country has never recorded before. Initial unemployment insurance claims are at the lowest levels since World War II. There are more job openings than there are unemployed workers.
Let that last one sink in. Not enough jobs to go around — too many jobs for the available workers. That’s not a recession. That’s the opposite of everything the Biden-era media told you was coming.
On manufacturing specifically, Hassett made the comparison that every Republican should be repeating from now until November: the typical construction or manufacturing worker in America has seen a $3,000 to $4,000 salary increase under Trump. Under Biden, that same worker saw their salary drop by roughly $3,000 — because manufacturing was collapsing and the high-paying blue-collar jobs were disappearing. “We’ll take our record over his every day,” Hassett said.
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This is the economic story that doesn’t fit the narrative the left has been running all year. They said tariffs would cause inflation. Inflation dropped 0.4% in June — the biggest single-month decline in over six years. They said manufacturing couldn’t come back. The number of manufacturing jobs under Biden dropped by 230,000. Under Trump, factories are being built at a pace the country has never seen. Toyota committed $3.6 billion to Texas. TSMC committed $265 billion to Arizona. 3.5 million new businesses opened in the first half of 2026. And now 83,000 workers are on job sites building the factories that will employ the next generation of American workers.
This is what Adam Smith was writing about in 1776 — the same year America declared its independence. Nations create wealth by making things. Nations that stop making things stop being wealthy nations. The Biden administration watched 230,000 manufacturing jobs disappear and called it the inevitable tide of globalization. The Trump administration is building factories and calling it America First.
The July jobs number had some noise in it — FIFA World Cup workers filing for unemployment after the tournament ended, and teachers in some states taking their summer break. Hassett acknowledged it and stripped out the one-time factors: underlying job creation was right around the 100,000 consensus estimate. The trend remains strong.
Factory construction. Wage growth. Record-low unemployment claims. More jobs than workers. The usual suspect naysayers on the left said it was impossible. The cranes say otherwise.
