Americans have experienced no real wage growth on average during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, compounding widespread public frustration with the U.S. economy.
According to economic data evaluated one year into the second Trump administration, overall economic performance in 2025 mirrored the previous year with little notable improvement outside of a cooling labor market. While the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported a total real economic growth rate of 2.2 percent for 2025—slightly decelerating from 2.4 percent in 2024—those modest gains failed to translate into tangible financial progress for everyday workers.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that nominal average hourly wage gains were completely offset by inflation. When adjusted using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), real average wages declined very slightly from 2024 levels, while using the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index showed a slightly more significant decline.
This stagnation in purchasing power occurred alongside a dramatic slowdown in job creation. The U.S. economy added fewer than 200,000 jobs throughout 2025—marking the slowest job growth in a nonrecession calendar year in over two decades—while the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4 percent by the end of the year. Concurrently, consumers faced accelerated inflation on high-salience household expenditures, including food at home and health care costs.
The combination of stagnant real wages, a frozen job market, and persistent cost pressures helps explain why consumer sentiment dropped sharply by 33 percent over the course of 2025, reaching some of the lowest levels ever recorded as the nation entered 2026.