“Trump put billionaires in charge of everything,” said progressive Congressman Greg Casar. “It’s a disaster.”

The US labor market, which in recent months had ground nearly to a halt, now appears to be entering a downward spiral.

As reported by the Washington Post on Thursday, new data from corporate outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that employers in October announced 153,000 job cuts, which marked the highest number of layoffs in that month since October 2003.

Total announced job cuts in 2025 have now reached 1.1 million, a number that the Post describes as a “recession-like” level comparable to the steep job cuts announced in the wake of the dotcom bust of the early 2000s, the global financial crisis of 2008, and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

  • tal@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 day ago

    “Trump put billionaires in charge of everything,” said progressive Congressman Greg Casar. “It’s a disaster.”

    While his cabinet is wealthy, it mostly is not billionaires (though we’ll see where they wind up, since I understand that some of the policy they’re running, like making executive decisions on tariff exemptions, is pretty open to corruption).

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2025/08/13/inside-the-richest-presidential-cabinet-ever/

    Name Role Net worth
    Donald Trump President $5,500,000,000
    Howard Lutnick Secretary of Commerce $3,300,000,000
    Linda McMahon Secretary of Education $3,300,000,000
    Scott Bessent Secretary of the Treasury $600,000,000
    Doug Burgum Secretary of the Interior $100,000,000
    Chris Wright Secretary of Energy $100,000,000
    Lori Chavez-DeRemer Secretary of Labor $35,000,000
    Brooke Rollins Secretary of Agriculture $15,000,000
    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Secretary of Health and Human Services $15,000,000
    JD Vance Vice President $12,000,000
    Pam Bondi Attorney General $5,000,000
    Kristi Noem Secretary of Homeland Security $5,000,000
    Sean Duffy Secretary of Transportation $5,000,000
    Scott Turner Secretary of Housing and Urban Development $4,000,000
    Pete Hegseth Secretary of Defense (well, now War, I suppose) $3,000,000
    Marco Rubio Secretary of State $1,500,000
    Doug Collins Secretary of Veterans Affairs $1,000,000

    I guess you could maybe count Elon Musk, who has…I dunno, I guess ~$300 billion at the time that he was running around the White House. But that’s just Musk, Trump, Lutnick, and McMahon that break the billionaire bar.

    • Thunderbird4@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      1 day ago

      I’m actually kind of shocked by the names at the bottom of the list. Like really? Marco Rubio’s entire net worth is less than a cheap house in the SF Bay Area?

      • tal@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 day ago

        I would take this opportunity to point out that housing in the Bay Area is in ludicrously short supply and has driven house prices to pretty stupid levels. YIMBY’s been banging on it, but…

    • asRomeBurns1979@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 day ago

      When he announced a WWE CEO as head of education for the first time ever I started wondering if we’re in a simulation. Top bracket satire.

    • heavy@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      I don’t think they meant that literally, even if *there are an alarming amount of billionaires in cabinet positions. Consider the meetings and dinners with billionaires, hiring Musk as “not really” an employee, lawsuits settling for acquisitions and mergers, the White House east wing slush fund, the Qatari jet and now air base in Idaho, crypto scamming, rich guy pardons.

      Essentially this administration has never been more up for grabs or influencable by money.