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MaddowBlog-On Trump's failures to create jobs, the White House flubs the meaning of 'strong'
If the White House was encouraged by the latest employment data, that might help explain why Trump is failing so spectacularly.
If Trump’s team looked at the latest jobs data and saw a “strong†report, that might help explain why he’s failing so spectacularly:
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-12-17T16:05:00.941Z
The White House doesn’t even know what economic success looks like. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/on-trumps-failures-to-create-jobs-the-white-house-flubs-the-meaning-of-strong
Over the course of half a day, Leavitt said the president came up with the “drill, baby, drill” slogan (he didn’t), claimed “100%” of the jobs gained during Joe Biden’s presidency “were for foreign-born workers” (they weren’t), and boasted that “many states” are now seeing gas prices below $2 per gallon (the actual number is zero).
But the whopper that stood out for me came earlier in the day, when she issued a written statement about the latest monthly jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “The strong jobs report shows how President Trump is fixing the damage caused by Joe Biden and creating a strong, America First economy in record time,” Leavitt said.
There may be some confusion about what “strong” means.
The latest jobs report, released Tuesday morning, was quite awful. The U.S. unemployment rate has reached its highest level in more than four years, and job growth has slowed to a level that could charitably be described as anemic.....
What’s more, since Trump announced his “Liberation Day” trade tariffs on April 2, the economy has added a grand total of 119,000 jobs — not per month, but cumulatively. For comparison, last year, when Trump said the economy was awful, the U.S. job market averaged almost 168,000 jobs per month, while this year, since “Liberation Day,” the job market averaged roughly 17,000 jobs per month.
The grand total of jobs created over the first 11 months of 2025 is 610,000 jobs, which might sound like a lot, but at this point a year ago, over the first 11 months of 2024, the total was almost 1.7 million jobs.
In fact, we remain very much on track to see the worst year for job creation since the Great Recession (excluding the massive losses associated with the pandemic in 2020).
If the president’s team looked at this data and saw a “strong” jobs report, that might help explain why Trump is failing so spectacularly: The White House doesn’t even know what success looks like.
But the whopper that stood out for me came earlier in the day, when she issued a written statement about the latest monthly jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “The strong jobs report shows how President Trump is fixing the damage caused by Joe Biden and creating a strong, America First economy in record time,” Leavitt said.
There may be some confusion about what “strong” means.
The latest jobs report, released Tuesday morning, was quite awful. The U.S. unemployment rate has reached its highest level in more than four years, and job growth has slowed to a level that could charitably be described as anemic.....
What’s more, since Trump announced his “Liberation Day” trade tariffs on April 2, the economy has added a grand total of 119,000 jobs — not per month, but cumulatively. For comparison, last year, when Trump said the economy was awful, the U.S. job market averaged almost 168,000 jobs per month, while this year, since “Liberation Day,” the job market averaged roughly 17,000 jobs per month.
The grand total of jobs created over the first 11 months of 2025 is 610,000 jobs, which might sound like a lot, but at this point a year ago, over the first 11 months of 2024, the total was almost 1.7 million jobs.
In fact, we remain very much on track to see the worst year for job creation since the Great Recession (excluding the massive losses associated with the pandemic in 2020).
If the president’s team looked at this data and saw a “strong” jobs report, that might help explain why Trump is failing so spectacularly: The White House doesn’t even know what success looks like.