During a speech in South Korea on Wednesday, President Donald Trump took the time to brag about job creation during his presidency, focusing entirely on the private sector, as the government shutdown that has seen federal employees work without pay drags on.
Trump delivered the keynote speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEOs luncheon in Gyeongju, South Korea, on Wednesday, and bragged about job creation in the private sector, adding that “the government created no new jobs.”
“100 percent of all new jobs created in America under my administration have been created by the private sector. Think of that. The government created no new jobs. The private sector created the record number of jobs that we’re talking about. That’s a country, that’s really a success,” he said.
President Trump Delivers Keynote Remarks at APEC CEOs Luncheon https://t.co/tQrCaeEAfv
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) October 29, 2025
He also outlined how he could fudge the numbers and make his administration look good by creating jobs, arguing that his predecessors had done the same. “It’s easy to create government jobs. I could say, ‘Add a lot of people to your payrolls,‘ I could fake up the numbers if I want, but that’s not the way you build a great country,” he told attendees.
“That’s what they used to do under the Biden administration, under Barack Hussein Obama, they’d say ‘Hire a lot of people so we can make our numbers look good,’ I do the opposite.”
The remarks came just one week after Trump set a record as being the man who has presided over the most days of a government shutdown, between this month’s stoppage and the 35-day shutdown of 2018-19.
The shutdown has resulted in thousands of federal employees working without pay, prompting the country’ largest federal workers’ union to call for an end to the shutdown.
While the Trump administration did accept a $130 million donation from billionaire Timothy Mellon in order to cover the salaries of active service members during the shutdown, Democrats were quick to note that the amount would not go far in covering the salaries of over a million soldiers.
Trump hired Tesla CEO Elon Musk to establish DOGE to hack and slash his way through government agencies in the name of saving money, but they wasted some $21.7 billion in taxpayer dollars, while also forcing agencies to quietly beg fired workers to return in the face of severe personnel shortages, including at the IRS and the General Services Administration.
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