The denizens of MAGA world are joining President Donald Trump’s White House in cheering for a monthly jobs report that saw growth stagnate and unemployment rise.
The U.S. economy added 151,000 jobs in February—Trump’s first full month in office. This is approximately the same number of jobs added in January and about half the number added in December. Unemployment ticked up from 4 percent to 4.1 percent.
The figures were in line with—if a touch worse than—economists' forecasts. Nevertheless, stocks took a tumble on Thursday after the report. The S&P 500, which aggregates the performance of 500 of the largest publicly traded American companies, was down 0.7 percent on the day.
“Today’s data was mixed at best, but we still have no clarity on the economy moving forward with the Trump turmoil,” Byron Anderson, head of fixed income at Laffer Tengler Investments, told NBC News. “The longer we have chaos and turmoil from Trump, the higher the probability that we will eventually have data trend negative.”
The middling report card didn’t stop Trump’s top spokesperson, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, from declaring victory.
“In one month under President Trump, the American economy is soaring back to greatness after the economic calamity left by Joe Biden,” she wrote in a statement on X. “The manufacturing industry is already rebounding as there were 9,000 new auto jobs created — the most auto jobs added in 15 months! Under President Trump, the private sector is leading the way — 93% of the job gains in February were in the private sector. This is great news for American workers and families.”
It wasn’t long before the MAGA masses fell in line and began singing Trump’s praises. Like Leavitt, many pro-Trump commentators fixated on the gains in manufacturing, ignoring the rest of the report.
Noting the manufacturing numbers and a 7,000 decline in workers on government payrolls (perhaps due to Elon Musk’s purge of federal employees), pro-Trump influencer Johnny MAGA wrote, “This is what winning looks like.”
“The manufacturing turnaround under Trump has been quite stunning,” wrote MAGA media pundit Daniel Baldwin, a White House correspondent at One America News Network. “Ten thousand jobs added in manufacturing in Feb.”
The report prompted Alabama Rep. Gary Palmer, an outspoken Trump devotee, to declare: “America is back!”
While Trump’s team and his supporters have argued that the manufacturing gains were an obvious improvement from his predecessor’s tenure, the reality isn’t so clear-cut.
For one, as Trump’s own commerce secretary pointed out this week, it isn’t yet apparent that this is the new president’s economy.
“We are in the middle of March,” Howard Lutnick told CNBC Wednesday. “My president took over Jan. 20. You think economic data coming out in early March is Donald Trump-related data?”
Moreover, Biden’s tenure saw nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs added to U.S. payrolls—almost double the gains of Trump’s first term, even excluding the pandemic tumble.
