Job growth during President Donald Trump’s first year back in office was far weaker than previously estimated, with the economy adding hundreds of thousands fewer jobs in 2025 than originally projected.
Instead of 584,000 jobs, or 49,000 jobs per month on average, the economy added just 181,000 jobs last year, for an average of 15,000 jobs per month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s latest jobs report released Wednesday.
Even under the original projections, Trump presided over the weakest year of job gains outside of a recession since 2003, falling far short of the 168,000 jobs per month on average that were added to the U.S. economy under former President Joe Biden.
Last month, planned layoffs reached their highest level for January since the Great Recession, according to the employment transition services firm Challenger, Gray, & Christmas.
But hiring appears to have finally picked up again in January 2026, with the economy adding a stronger-than-expected 130,000 jobs, according to the BLS report.
Trump seized on the news to renew his calls for the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates.
“GREAT JOBS NUMBERS, FAR GREATER THAN EXPECTED!” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Wednesday. “The Golden Age of America is upon us!!!”
His post didn’t mention the revised 2025 numbers.
Despite months of pressure from Trump, the jobs numbers “vindicate” Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s decision not to lower interest rates sooner, Ellen Zentner, chief economic strategist for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, told The New York Times.
“Today’s data shows an acceleration in employment that was strong enough to drive unemployment lower—vindication for Chair Powell’s holding pattern,” Zentner said.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
The administration was apparently bracing for another month of bad jobs data, with various administration officials appearing on network TV to put a positive spin on the estimates.
Trade adviser Peter Navarro appeared on Fox Business on Tuesday to make some head-scratching claims about how the jobs that were created during the Biden years were going to undocumented immigrants.
Thanks to Trump’s mass deportations, the economy really only needs to add about 50,000 jobs per month to be “steady state,” he said.
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.
January jobs reports typically feature yearly data revisions, including an adjustment to square monthly payroll estimates from employer surveys with data derived from state unemployment insurance tax records.
The employer surveys are more immediate, but the tax records included in the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program are far more accurate and provide a near-complete employment count, according to CNN.
The monthly data in January jobs reports can also be hard to interpret because of the difficulty of making seasonal adjustments to payroll estimates right after the holidays, according to The New York Times.
The post Jobs Growth Under Trump Even More Dismal Than Originally Thought appeared first on The Daily Beast.
