Harry Enten reports 61-point reversal in Trump's standing with workers
The CNN data analyst's Labor Day breakdown came two weeks after Trump called him the best person on the network.
Harry Enten, CNN's chief data analyst, told viewers Monday that President Donald Trump's standing on the economy among full-time workers has swung 61 points against him since the 2024 campaign, a shift he described on air as a complete 180. The reading, delivered on the network's News Central on Labor Day, undercut one of the president's strongest issues from his election win.
During the 2024 election, full-time workers trusted Trump over Democratic rival Kamala Harris on the economy by 20 points, a gap Enten called a major strength for the then-candidate. His net economic approval rating among the same group now sits 41 points underwater, according to the numbers Enten presented. Combined, the movement from a 20-point advantage to a 41-point deficit is what produced the 61-point reversal at the center of his analysis.
The grim reading landed two weeks after Trump had singled Enten out for praise. In an August 29 post, the president, 80, called him the best person on CNN and credited the analyst with showing, in Trump's words, that he was six times more popular than Abraham Lincoln, George Washington or any other president. He also said Enten had credibility, praise the president rarely extends to anyone at the network.
A complete 180 on the economy
Enten laid out the shift on News Central, saying the economy had been a strength for Trump in 2024 before flipping. He asked viewers to look at how the president was faring on the economy with people employed full-time, then delivered his verdict that the picture had become a complete 180 from the position he held during the campaign against Harris.
The 2024 advantage was concrete. Employed voters trusted Trump over Harris on the economy by 20 points during that campaign, one of the clearest edges he carried into the vote. Enten described the president's current position with the same group as the exact opposite of that strength, the mirror image of the number that had helped define his economic pitch.
With net economic approval among full-time workers at 41 points underwater, Enten reached for imagery to describe the drop, saying the line had sunk down into the Hudson River. He tied the timing to the holiday, calling it not a happy Labor Day for Trump on how those who are employed view him on the economy, and repeated the line as he moved through the data.
The swing from plus 20 to minus 41 amounts to a 61-point reversal, which Enten called a switcheroo in the wrong direction on Labor Day. He framed the figures as bad news not only for Trump but for Republicans, pointing ahead to the 2026 midterm elections as the next test of the mood among working voters that had turned so sharply since the last election.
Economic sentiment among employed Americans had ranked among the president's clearest edges in the 2024 campaign. The reversal Enten described covers people in full-time work, a group whose confidence in the job market Trump had vowed on the campaign trail to improve. The polling suggests that confidence has instead weakened over the past year and a half, with the share calling it a bad time to find work moving steadily higher.
Workers turn gloomy on the job market
Confidence in finding work has fallen sharply, according to the polling Enten cited. In the final quarter of 2024, 54 percent of people in the workforce said it was a bad time to find a job. By the second quarter of 2026, the most recent period covered, that share had climbed to 72 percent, a rise Enten flagged as the direction of the whole story.
That is a rise of 18 points. The mirror figure moved the same way: the 46 percent who once called it a good time to find a job has fallen to 28 percent. Workers in the survey, Enten said, simply do not think it is a good time to find a quality job, and the bad reading has only climbed higher through the last quarter measured.
| Full-time workers on the economy | 2024 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Trump's net standing | +20 | -41 |
| Bad time to find a job | 54% | 72% |
| Good time to find a job | 46% | 28% |
The two years measure the economy differently. The 2024 figure reflects how far full-time workers trusted Trump over Harris; the 2026 figure is his net approval on the economy with the same group. Enten treated the move from one to the other as a single arc, and it is that arc, from plus 20 to minus 41, that gives the 61-point reversal he put at the center of the segment.
Trump had called him CNN's best
Trump's praise for Enten was recent and effusive. In the August 29 post, he wrote that CNN was in a death spiral, and that its rival, which he called MSNOW, the new name for what he labeled MSDNC, was faring no better. Nobody, he claimed, was watching either network. Against that dismissal of the two channels, he set Enten apart as the exception.
The president reserved his highest marks for Enten, whom he described as CNN's best pollster. Trump said the analyst had credibility, crediting him with data showing the president far more popular than past occupants of the White House. That endorsement, offered in the same breath as an attack on the network, is what makes the Monday breakdown awkward for a White House that had just embraced the messenger.
Enten's Monday segment offered no such comfort for the president. His breakdown focused on employed voters, the group Trump had leaned on in 2024, and the numbers ran against the White House across every measure he cited, from trust on the economy to how workers rate their chances of finding a good job in the current market.
The best person on CNN is Pollster Harry Enten.
The compliment came with a specific claim about Enten's work, that his data made Trump six times more popular than Lincoln or Washington. The poll behind it asked Republicans only, and while Trump did outpoll Lincoln by more than six to one among them, he led Reagan, the runner-up, by about three to one and was never measured against every president. The Labor Day analysis dealt with a narrower and more current question: whether working Americans still trust the president on the economy. On that measure, the same analyst delivered a very different answer, one that put Trump's standing 41 points underwater with full-time workers.
The reversal and the 2026 midterms
Enten cast the figures as a problem for Republicans as well as for Trump. He tied the economic slide to the party's outlook heading into the 2026 midterm elections, framing the souring mood among full-time workers as the core of the shift he had traced from the campaign to Labor Day. That group had been central to his economic message during the 2024 campaign.
- 2024: full-time workers trusted Trump over Harris on the economy by 20 points
- 2026: his net economic approval with that group is 41 points underwater
- Bad time to find a job rose from 54 percent to 72 percent
- Good time to find a job fell from 46 percent to 28 percent
The polling covers self-identified members of the workforce and, separately, full-time workers, the segments Enten used to track how employment shapes views of the economy. Both moved against the president over the same stretch, from the 2024 campaign through the second quarter of this year, and neither showed the improvement in job-market confidence he had promised on the trail.
The segment stayed on people with jobs rather than the wider public, sharpening the contrast with 2024, when employment had worked in the president's favor. Enten underscored the Labor Day timing as he ran through the figures, returning to the holiday to underline how far employed Americans had swung since the campaign.
A reversal on Trump's strongest issue
The economy had ranked among the strongest parts of Trump's 2024 case, and the shift Enten detailed reaches straight into that core. Full-time workers who once gave him a clear edge over Harris now rate him well below water on the issue, a turn the analyst measured at 61 points and set alongside workers' darkening view of the job market.
Enten's place in Trump's good graces gave the segment added weight. The president had held the analyst up as CNN's most credible voice two weeks earlier, and the same analyst then laid out numbers cutting against his economic record with employed Americans, a group that had been one of his strengths in 2024 and now reads as one of his weaknesses.
So those who are in the workforce, simply put, do not think it is a good time to find a quality job, and that bad number has only climbed ever higher.
For Trump, the figures reframe a strength as a liability with the very workers he courted in 2024. Enten summed up the picture on air as a complete 180, the same phrase that opened his analysis, and one that captured a 61-point turn on the issue Trump had run on hardest.
