Can printing money save the economy? Just look at the current job market for the answer.

The data released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics last week was quite a slap in the face: non-farm employment increased by 119,000, which sounds good, right? But manufacturing jobs directly evaporated by 6,000. Even more dramatic, Trump launched a tariff war in April, claiming it would revitalize factories, but after half a year, factory jobs have cumulatively dropped by 59,000, falling for six consecutive months.

Some economic commentators have bluntly said that this is the first time since the pandemic that the US has started losing blue-collar jobs. Manufacturing is shrinking, and growth in construction and logistics is almost zero. The white-collar side has long been a mess—big company layoffs are making headlines one after another, and academic papers are starting to discuss AI taking jobs. Previously, people thought blue-collar work was a fallback—if you couldn't stay in the office, you could still go to the factory. Now, even that path is narrowing.

Laura Ulrich, a recruiting expert at Fortune magazine, put it very directly: "It's ironic that manufacturing is so weak, because tariffs were supposed to protect domestic factories and increase jobs." But what's the reality? The uncertainty brought by tariffs has made factories more conservative, and affected companies can only cut labor costs to maintain profits. Aside from the healthcare and hospitality industries still hiring, most other sectors are contracting.

Economists explain it simply: the price of imported raw materials and intermediate goods has risen, production costs have gone up, so who dares to hire on a large scale? Opening factories in the US was already prohibitively expensive; paying tariffs to import goods has actually become the easiest choice.

There's a similar story in China. White-collar jobs are hard to find, so many people have turned to delivery, ride-hailing, and courier services, but those industries are also reaching saturation. The civil service exam is now even more popular than graduate school exams, which shows just how anxious people are about the future.

China and the US manufacturing sectors share another pain point: factories are actually short on highly skilled workers, but can't hire any. Ford has 5,000 mechanic positions open, some paying up to $120,000 a year, but there just aren't enough qualified people. Deloitte's 2024 survey of over 200 US manufacturing companies found that over 65% said hiring and retention were their biggest challenges. Chinese manufacturing companies are also looking for people, but overall, society is still not very willing to learn practical manufacturing skills.

In recent years, global central banks have been pumping money into the system and printing at scale, intending to save the economy and create jobs. But what about the results? Economic growth and employment data are lackluster. What has really changed? Stock, gold, and cryptocurrency prices are soaring—but those are games for the capital markets and have nothing to do with ordinary people finding jobs.

So, where is the core of the problem? Whether blue-collar or white-collar, the skills of ordinary people are increasingly expensive and inefficient compared to machines. Factory workers in Southeast and South Asia earn much less than those in China, but they still can't compete with the sheer number and efficiency of Chinese factory machines. The white-collar story is even more awkward—a lot of jobs are, in truth, dispensable, and when companies need to protect profits, there's plenty of room for layoffs.

Human productivity has been advancing all along, especially with China at the center. But society as a whole hasn't become more relaxed; instead, there's widespread anxiety about the value of labor. More and more people lack confidence in the future. The only sector that seems to be booming is hospitality and tourism—those whose wealth and social status are secure are traveling all over East Asia and the West, and demand is growing nicely.

So much money has been printed, the stock market is up, crypto prices are soaring, but ordinary people's jobs haven't increased. This is probably the most surreal reality of our times.