The U.S. Economy Is Becoming a Jenga Tower

There’s a familiar tension in the game of Jenga: the tower rises higher, looking ever more impressive, even as every missing block makes the whole structure more fragile. And then—without warning—it collapses.

That image is perhaps the clearest way to describe the American economy in late 2025.

Growth is still solid. Stocks are still soaring. Fiscal and monetary policy still provide the appearance of stability. To most observers, nothing looks obviously broken.

But beneath the polished surface, the load-bearing blocks—small business, labor markets, consumer resilience, and the Big Tech–driven equity boom—are loosening one by one. An abrupt, nonlinear downturn is far from inevitable, but the architecture of risk is shifting in that direction. And very few people seem willing to notice.

The most visible structural weakening this year has come from small businesses—especially those dependent on global trade.

Companies with fewer than 500 employees account for 46% of U.S. private-sector employment , and in trade they matter even more. According to Commerce Department data released in April, 97% of U.S. importing firms are small businesses , and they account for roughly one-third of the country’s total import value.

They are also the least able to withstand Trump’s tariff shock.

Unlike global conglomerates, small firms lack the capital, political access, and supply-chain flexibility to absorb or reroute around 100%+ tariffs. The Atlanta Fed estimates that tariff-related cost increases will reduce small-business revenue by around 9% , compared with 3% for large firms—a three-to-one impact gap.

And the consequences have been immediate.

ADP payroll data shows that from April to September, small businesses cut 107,000 jobs , while large employers actually increased headcount. The pressure is now spreading across the labor landscape.

The federal government plans to eliminate 300,000 public-sector jobs over the next fiscal year.
Private employers, facing wage pressures and front-loaded AI infrastructure spending, are implementing hiring freezes and layoffs. October’s combined public- and private-sector layoff announcements were the highest in 22 years.

And when jobs disappear, consumption tightens.
When consumption tightens, companies pull back.
And when companies pull back, the Jenga tower tilts a little further.

Yet remarkably, consumer spending has held up throughout most of 2025. It has been one of the economy’s essential support beams.

But that beam is narrowing.

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook issued a blunt diagnosis in November:
Lower- and middle-income Americans are tightening, delinquency rates are spiking, and consumption has stalled.
High-income households are the only group still spending.

This imbalance tracks perfectly with asset ownership.
As of mid-2025, the top 10% of U.S. households hold 87% of all U.S. equities and mutual fund wealth —a concentration amplified by the 74% surge in the S&P 500 since ChatGPT’s release in late 2022.

The result is simple:
America’s consumer economy is now being propped up almost entirely by wealthy households whose spending depends on Big Tech valuations.

Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon have already committed more than $380 billion in 2025 capital expenditure—mostly AI data centers and supporting infrastructure. Adjusted for inflation, that exceeds the total budget of the Apollo program.

In the first half of the year, AI-related investment contributed more to GDP growth than household consumption .

This has created a private-sector analog to fiscal stimulus:
Big Tech investment props up markets → markets lift high-income wealth → high-income wealth sustains consumer spending → consumer spending keeps GDP afloat.

Wall Street wants to believe this lasts. Forecasts for 2026 project GDP growth similar to 2025 and S&P 500 earnings growth above 12%.

But the list of potential shock events is long:

• Data center power shortages
• Slower-than-expected AI monetization
• Inflation that refuses to fall
• A Chinese breakthrough in foundational AI or advanced chips
• A single major AI-chip player defaulting or missing earnings
• An “AI bubble repricing” that cascades across equities

Any one of these would knock out load-bearing blocks.

Optimists point to tax refunds early next year, possible Fed rate cuts, disinflation momentum, and Meta’s promise of $600 billion in U.S. investment over three years. They argue the tower can keep rising.

Maybe it can.
Tall Jenga towers sometimes do.

But structural fragility doesn’t require a trigger that looks dramatic.
It simply requires one more block being pulled out at the wrong moment.

And in the U.S. economy of 2025, almost every critical block—labor, consumption, small business, the wealth channel, Big Tech equity valuations—has become load-bearing simultaneously.

No one knows whether the U.S. economy will collapse, or when, or what the spark might be.

But the metaphor holds.
In Jenga, the collapse is never gradual.
It comes in a moment, after a long period of silent instability.

The problem is not the height of the tower.
It’s how much weight is resting on how few blocks.