
'Very, Very Bad': Ex-Government Economist Makes Bleakest Trump Prediction
HuffPost
Jesse Rothstein warned it "seems almost unavoidable at this point."
It “seems almost unavoidable at this point” that the United States is “headed for a deep, deep recession” thanks to the Trump administration’s massive government job cuts and pullback from official contracts, a former Obama-era Department of Labor economist has warned.
Jesse Rothstein, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, predicted on BlueSky this week that the employment report for March 2025 will show “bigger job losses than any month ever outside of a few in 2008-9 and 2020.” (I.e. — when America was hit by the 2008 financial crash and then, later, by the coronavirus pandemic).
Rothstein also envisioned “enormous private market uncertainty” that would make companies reluctant to hire.
It’s “going to be very, very bad,” he said he feared.
President Donald Trump has tasked billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, with slashing public spending via the non-official Department of Government Efficiency.