Trump’s top goon on the National Economic Council gave a desperate defense of Friday’s dreadful jobs report.
Kevin Hassett, the Trump-appointed director of the NEC, told Fox Business on Friday that the concerning December 2025 job report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics was actually not that bad, if you look at it the way he does.
“When you look at the [job] numbers and see that they’re below 100 [thousand], the below 100 thing isn’t as disturbing as it might be in the past,” Hassett told Varney & Co host Stuart Varney.
“We’ve reduced federal government employment by 250,000 this year, and, of course, we’re deporting illegals,” Hassett, 63, continued. “And so if you account for those things, then the expected jobs number for a strong month is a lot closer to what we’re seeing.”
Varney, looking concerned, replied, “I just think we’re missing something here.”
The new BLS figures show that employers added only 50,000 jobs last month—nearly 33 percent below the Dow Jones estimate of 73,000.
BLS data shows that in the final full year of President Joe Biden’s term, the economy added an average of 168,000 jobs per month. Throughout Trump’s second term in 2025, the figure shrank to 49,000 jobs per month.
Also included in the data was a revision to October’s job report, which showed the economy lost 68,000 more jobs than previously reported. In total, the economy shed a whopping 173,000 non-farm jobs in October alone.
Like October and November before it, December’s numbers may diminish further in future reports.
Navy Federal Credit Union chief economist Heather Long told CNBC that 2025’s payroll employment gain of 584,000 marks the worst year outside of a recession since 2003. The payroll gain in 2024 was nearly quadruple that, totaling two million.
“It’s fair to say that 2025 was a hiring recession in the United States,” Long said. “The United States is experiencing a jobless boom where growth is strong, but hiring is not.”
“It’s a great scenario for Wall Street, but an uneasy feeling on Main Street.”
Trump’s top troll, California Governor Gavin Newsom, was quick to dig into the president’s failing economy. On X, the Newsom Press Office account quoted a report that 2025 was the worst year for hiring since the 2020 pandemic freeze. Newsom pointed out a parallel between 2020 and 2025: both were years Trump led the country.
Hassett, Trump’s top economic adviser, is rumored to be the president’s number one pick to replace Jerome Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve.
Before ending his interview with Hassett, Varney addressed the rumored appointment. “Would you like to be the chairman of the Federal Reserve?” Varney asked.
After saying he “loved his job,” Hassett, who holds a PhD in economics from Trump’s alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, responded, “If the president asked me to do that, I told him I would accept.”
Trump told The New York Times that his pick has already been solidified, but he has yet to reveal who it is. “I don’t want to say,” Trump told the Times, but said that Hassett was “certainly one of the people that I like.”
