As funding slashes, tariffs freeze budgets, and economic uncertainty mounts, highly educated professionals are facing severe pay cuts, underemployment, and prolonged unemployment in an increasingly precarious white-collar economy.
Welcome to Trump’s America, The i Paper’s World Insight series presenting the sharpest, deepest thinking on an era-defining shift in history and politics. We investigate how Donald Trump and his administration have changed the US and the world – and where we go from here.
Tessa*, a 39-year-old astrobiologist with a PhD in geology, had her dream career mapped out. After graduating, she immediately secured a postdoctoral position in Arizona. “Astrobiology is literally what I’ve wanted to do since I was 12,” she told *The i Paper*.
Then Donald Trump returned to office. Federal research funding was slashed, and her position was eliminated. In November 2025, she began a grueling job search, applying to nearly 300 roles in her field to no avail. Desperate, she took a job as a Starbucks barista. By late March, she finally landed a role as a research facilitator, teaching others to use supercomputers. While the pay is reasonable, the psychological toll is heavy.
“I feel like I’m basically stuck here,” she says, acutely aware that she is no longer conducting the research she spent her adult life training for, but merely facilitating it for others.
Michael*, a 45-year-old writer and editor in Connecticut, has been out of work for 18 months. Despite 13 years of experience, he describes his job search as “brutally demoralising,” rarely receiving a single reply to his applications. His wife was also laid off; though she eventually found a new position, her salary was significantly reduced, forcing the couple to drain his meagre savings.
“I’m watching things like retirement or a college education for my child recede further and further from reality,” he says. “I want to work. I’m desperate to work. But work doesn’t want me.”
A Precarious White-Collar Economy
Tessa and Michael are not isolated cases. They are part of a growing demographic of professionals navigating an increasingly fragile American white-collar economy.
While the US has not officially slipped into a recession, the economy is far from robust. The headline unemployment rate sits at a relatively low 4.1 per cent, but this figure is artificially suppressed by discouraged workers who have stopped looking and are no longer counted in the statistics.
Mary*, a 57-year-old privacy-compliance expert laid off a year ago, is still searching. The interviews she does secure are either for severely underpaid roles or positions where she is vastly overqualified. “Do you just suck it up just to have a job, or do you try to hold out for the best thing, or am I really retired?” she asks.
As professionals like Mary opt to give up or take early retirement, labour force participation has dropped to 61.4 per cent over the last two months—the lowest level outside of pandemic shutdowns since the 1970s. Furthermore, the Labour Department recently reported a reduction of 23,000 US payrolls, accompanied by a grim downward revision of 103,000 jobs for May and June.
The professional sector is bearing the brunt of this instability. In April, independent economist Aaron Terrazas noted that white-collar payroll jobs had contracted for 31 consecutive months—a streak rarely seen outside of a formal recession.
This weakness extends beyond hiring freezes into compensation. While employers rarely cut base salaries outright, they are offering raises below the rate of inflation and reducing contributions to healthcare and retirement benefits. In March, a report revealed that 40 per cent of white-collar workers who switched jobs took a pay cut—the highest proportion in at least a decade.
Policy Shifts and Frozen Budgets
For many, the downturn is directly tied to the policy shifts of the new administration.
Carlos*, a 50-year-old in Oklahoma, left a 25-year graphic design career to earn an MA in public policy, pivoting to data analytics for non-profits in 2023. He was unexpectedly let go last month from a job he’d held for a year. He attributes his unemployment to the anticipated tsunami of cuts to social safety nets.
“In Oklahoma, 100,000 people are going to lose their SNAP benefits,” he notes, referring to the nutritional assistance programme, alongside looming Medicaid cuts. Consequently, non-profits are hoarding resources to handle the impending surge in need, halting all hiring. “There are no office administrator jobs. There are no programme management jobs. Not even caseworkers. No one is hiring anything,” he says.
In the corporate and creative sectors, sweeping tariffs have induced a similar paralysis. Kimberly Harrington, a freelance writer and creative director who spent 20 years supporting her family with high-profile clients like Apple, Netflix, and Nike, watched the business landscape fracture as Trump took office.
After the administration announced sweeping tariffs, “there was so much uncertainty that things just froze,” she explains. “No one felt like they could make a decision. Budgets got killed, projects got killed.” Now unable to find full-time work, Harrington reports this is the worst year she has experienced in two decades of freelancing, surpassing the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse.
"Ghost Jobs" and the Human Toll
The uncertainty has also given rise to confusing hiring practices. Clark*, a 34-year-old editor, was laid off from a media company in January 2024, found work in March 2025, and was laid off again that October. In one instance, he endured five rounds of interviews only to be told the role had been scrapped.
“It just seems to indicate a lot of uncertainty, a lot of confusing mixed messaging,” he says. “I don’t know if these roles are being offered in good faith or what is actually happening internally. It’s a very confusing and stressful time to be applying.”
The prolonged unemployment has forced Clark’s family to let go of their nanny. He is now providing full-time childcare while his wife works, severely limiting his own time to job hunt.
A Permanent Shift?
There are faint glimmers of hope. Economist Terrazas notes that after a three-year decline, white-collar payrolls have expanded slightly since the spring, offering him “cautious optimism”. Similarly, Lynn*, a 42-year-old biotech researcher with a master’s degree who has been searching since November 2025, has recently started securing interviews after a long drought. “I’m excited that it seems like people are starting to hire,” she says.
However, against the backdrop of falling overall job numbers and ongoing political turbulence, most workers remain deeply pessimistic. For professionals like Harrington, the white-collar job market “doesn’t feel like an ebb and flow,” she says.
“It feels like a permanent shift. And it’s not just me. It’s everyone I know.”