TAG Industrial Watch: November 22, 2025

This past week was bombarded with much of the government-produced data that has been M.I.A over the last two months. Starting with the jobs data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the September report showing a continuous increase in the unemployment rate to a near four-year high of 4.4%. Employment growth showed some improvement with the addition of 119,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis. Not surprisingly, transportation and warehouse jobs led the way lower with a loss of -25,000 jobs, largely due to the impact of the tariffs. If you are a regular reader of the Industrial Watch, you may be aware that the often guesstimated headline number should be taken with a grain of salt, and instead, more focus should be paid to the revisions of previous months. Nonfarm employment growth for July and August was collectively revised lower by 33,000 jobs than previously reported. More importantly, the revision to August left the month with an outright reduction of -4,000 jobs; along with June’s -13,000 jobs count, this represents only the second time that employment has contracted since 2010 outside of the pandemic year.

Moving on to the Consumer Price Index (also produced by the BLS), the year-over-year change notched up to 3.0%, bringing doubt to the Federal Reserve’s decision next month to cut interest rates. Of course, if the cost of living feels like it’s rising faster, you’re probably right. For example, according to the BLS, the cost of apparel has actually fallen by 10 basis points over the last year, but a recent independent report shows that the average price on major clothing categories has risen anywhere from 2% to 24% annually (CNBC).

In the September issue of the Industrial Watch magazine, TAG claimed that, “Trump may not succeed in rebuilding America’s manufacturing industry, but he will likely be successful in reducing the nation’s trade deficits.” In the August international trade report published by the U.S. Census Bureau, the merchandise trade deficit improved to a 17-month high of -$83 billion, largely due to a big $30 billion drop in merchandise imports (down -5.3% annually). While this will have a short-term positive impact on how the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is calculated, this is unfortunately bad news for an economy (consumers and producers) dependent upon imports, as indicated by the -54,000 drop in manufacturing employment this year. The good news is that merchandise exports increased by $4.5 billion in August, essentially unchanged year-over-year. While the overall economy continues to flash signs of stagflation, export-related properties are quickly becoming a safe haven for industrial investors.