May 10, 2026
If you're struggling to find a job, you have tariffs to blame — at least according to Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics.
On May 4, Zandi took to X to show the impacts of President Donald J. Trump's tariffs on the U.S. economy since Liberation Day on April 2, 2025 (1). He graphed job growth and inflation rates since January 2025.
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His graph showed that rates were relatively stable in the months leading up to Liberation Day and they started getting worse by September.
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"The trend lines don't look good, especially as the economic fallout from the Iran War hits with full force," Zandi stated. "The U.S. economy is resilient, but just how resilient is set to be tested."
Here are the numbers Zandi's most concerned about — and what they could mean for you.
Low job growth and high inflation don't make a good pair
Zandi's graph focuses on two stats: Average monthly job growth and the year-over-year change of PCE inflation. It shows that, since Liberation Day, the amount of jobs added each month have mainly been decreasing, while inflation has mainly been increasing.
"Since that day, job growth has come to a standstill, with only the non-traded healthcare industry adding meaningfully to payrolls. Also, since that day, inflation has accelerated," Zandi said.
Zandi isn't the only economist to focus on jobs and inflation as key economic indicators. The Federal Reserve uses unemployment rates and CPI inflation to determine how it changes its rates. Keeping prices stable and employment high is the Fed's dual mandate (2).
The Fed aims for a 2% inflation rate. As of March 2026, the CPI inflation rate was 3.3% (3).
Unemployment is faring better than inflation, at 4.3%. The Fed doesn't have a specific unemployment rate it aims for, but 4.3% is considered low (4) — not something to worry about on its own.
Job growth tells a different story. After Liberation Day, the average number of jobs added per month started plummeting; for the past six months, more months saw the total number of jobs shrink than grow (5).
This, along with rising inflation, could indicate an economy struggling to grow under heavy tariff costs. It could also be why it's hard to find another job if you lose yours: there just aren't very many open jobs to take.
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How the Iran war and future Trump tariffs could impact you
In February 2026, the Supreme Court declared much of Trump's tariff policy unconstitutional. But Trump is already planning on instituting new tariffs (6). And the Iran war is also causing problems for the economy, raising the price of oil and other goods like groceries.
"The higher energy and other commodity prices caused by the war threaten to do even more economic damage than the tariffs," Zandi said.
This isn't the first time Zandi has sounded the alarm on tariffs. He's been warning about the tariffs' economic impact since April 2025, before they were put in place (7).
"There's no good case here," Zandi said in an April 2025 interview with CNN on what impact the tariffs could have. "It's just variations on a dark theme."
In April 2026, Zandi started warning about a possible recession based on a new Moody's model called the Vicious Cycle Index (VCI) (8). If he's right about a recession, then the job market and price increases could get worse than they are already. Like Zandi's new model indicates, it could be a vicious cycle: a worse job market and high inflation means less spending, which means layoffs, and the cycle continues.
Article Sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our ethics and guidelines.
X (1),(5),(8); Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (2); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (3); Center for Economic and Policy Research (4); YouTube (6); CNN (7)
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Kit Pulliam is a DC-based financial journalist with over five years of experience writing, editing, and fact-checking financial content.
