The jobs most vulnerable under the next Trump administration

By Elisabeth Buchwald, CNN

New York (CNN) — President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on the promise to create more American jobs and protect existing ones. But many of his proposals and expected policy changes threaten to have the opposite effect for some working Americans.

It remains unclear as to which of Trump’s initiatives will be implemented. He has pledged mass deportations of people who entered the country illegally and sweeping, across-the-board tariffs on all imports worldwide. Nevertheless, the implications for the American workforce are huge.

For some industries, his policies could create more jobs. For example, higher tariffs could help boost American manufacturing jobs if more businesses decide they want their goods made domestically to avoid the added cost of importing. A spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition team told CNN in a statement that Trump is committed to repeating “his first term’s successes,” including “historic job growth for everyday Americans.”

(While unemployment in the US was historically low throughout much of Trump’s first term, the economy shed millions of jobs during the pandemic. As a result, when he departed the White House fewer Americans were employed compared to when he arrived.)

Still, even as some industries could expand under Trump’s second term, many others could be forced to lay off masses of workers as a result of new potential policies he signs into law.

Here are the sectors that could be most vulnerable:

Oil and gas

Virtually any business that’s involved in exporting goods to other nations could be forced to lay off workers if Trump follows through with the tariff threats he has made, said Harry Holzer, a public policy professor at Georgetown University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

That’s because, in response to being subjected to higher tariffs, impacted nations would likely impose comparable tariffs on American goods, he said. That could significantly raise American businesses’ costs while also reducing demand for their goods. Many American companies experienced this during Trump’s first term as China responded with tit-for-tat tariffs on American imports.

With oil as the country’s top exported good, per 2023 federal trade data, employers in that industry would likely need to rebalance costs by cutting back a large number of workers if other nations impose retaliatory tariffs on US goods.

That would mean workers involved in extracting oil and gas — including, for instance, mining and geological engineers and people who work on oil rigs — could be vulnerable to job losses.

Similarly, workers involved in producing chemicals, cars, transportation parts and electronics could be at risk given these are also among some of the top goods the US exports, Holzer, a former chief economist at the Department of Labor, said.

Federal government

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are leading efforts to scale back on government spending through Trump’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have vocalized support for firing federal government employees.

In fact, Musk recently reposted two X posts that revealed the names and titles of people holding four relatively obscure climate-related government positions he believes should be eliminated.

“The number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified,” Musk and Ramaswamy said in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

In Holzer’s view, workers in the Justice Department and also the Education Department (which Trump has advocated for eliminating entirely) have much more to fear, as opposed to workers involved in defense-related agencies.

Green energy

Trump, a climate-change skeptic, is likely to try to undo some of the green energy initiatives the Biden administration put into place, said Holzer. That could include paring back tax incentives and grants for businesses producing electric vehicles and lithium ion batteries.

Both industries have become “dependent” on federal investments the Biden administration successfully pushed for. Without those investments, workers “would be on the chopping block pretty quickly,” he said.

For instance, last month, the Department of Energy announced a $6.6 billion conditional loan commitment to Rivian, an electric vehicle startup that is a nascent competitor to Tesla, Musk’s $1 trillion car company.

Ramaswamy said that loan and others like it are “high on the list of items” that he will look to claw back once DOGE gets going next year. (Tesla received a similar DOE loan for $465 million in 2010 that gave it much-needed funding ahead of its first public sale of stock.)

Two massive unknowns

If Trump authorizes mass deportations, it would likely cause significant labor shortages in industries like construction, agriculture and hospitality that rely heavily on undocumented migrant workers.

The potential loss of millions of people in the US would mean businesses nationwide could see revenues decline substantially, said Monster economist Giacomo Santangelo. That could then lead a wide swath of businesses to lay off workers. On top of that, the overall health of the nation’s economy could decline with forecasts indicating gross domestic product could plummet if mass deportations occur. There’s even the possibility it could help push the economy in a recession.

Longer term, it’s also not clear how the Federal Reserve would respond to Trump’s tariff and immigration policies, both of which could cause inflation to spike.

“In the face of inflation, the Federal Reserve is going to have to raise interest rates,” Santangelo told CNN. That would put pressure especially on small businesses, which employ half of America’s workforce, he said. Small businesses tend to be more sensitive to increases in borrowing rates, and as a result could lay off some workers, he added.

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