President Donald Trump’s trade adviser offered a bizarre pitch for why Americans should actually be happy about the administration’s terrible jobs numbers.
Since Trump returned to office, the economy has only been adding about 49,000 jobs per month on average, compared to about 168,000 jobs per month under former President Joe Biden.
That means Trump presided over the weakest year of jobs gains outside a recession since 2003, and more bad news is expected Wednesday when the Bureau of Labor Statistics is set to release its latest jobs report, according to CNN.
Apparently eager to get ahead of the report and try to prevent market fall-out, Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro insisted Tuesday that the poor jobs numbers were actually evidence that the administration is deporting “millions” of undocumented immigrants who were previously stealing jobs from Americans.
“We have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like,” Navarro told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “When we were letting in 2 million illegal aliens, we had to produce 200,000 jobs a month for steady state.”
The jobs that were created during the Biden years were “going to illegals,” while “American were going to the employment lines,” he continued. Under Trump, that supposed trend has reversed, so really the country only needs to create about 50,000 jobs per month, he added.
“So, Wall Street, when this stuff comes out, they can’t rain on that parade, they have to adjust to the fact that we’re deporting millions of illegals out of our job market,” Navarro said.
The administration has arrested about 393,000 immigrants since Trump took office last year, not “millions,” CBS News reported Monday.
Navarro’s “explanation” also ignores the fact that the U.S. unemployment rate ticked up during Trump’s first year back in office, hitting a four-year high of 4.6 percent in November 2025.
Last month, planned layoffs reached their highest level for January since the Great Recession.
Bartiromo was nevertheless keen to embrace Navarro’s framing of the economy.
“That’s a good point,” she said. “But it sounds like you’re expecting a weak number tomorrow.”
“No, not expecting a weak number,” Navarro insisted. “I’m just saying that going forward, when we see a number under 100,000, we don’t wring our hands. We say, ‘Yeah that’s going to be steady state.’”
His argument echoed that of Kevin Hassett, Trump’s head of the National Economic Council, who last month insisted that the job numbers really weren’t that bad.
“The below 100 [thousand] thing isn’t as disturbing as it might be in the past,” he said.
Trump has also insisted this week that he’s “very proud” of his economy, even as large percentages of Americans say they’re worried about their ability to pay for good and other basics.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
