Right-wing media spun the bad November jobs report as a win for “native-born” workers

With the United States’ economic outlook appearing increasingly grim toward the end of President Donald Trump’s first year back in office, right-wing media apologists of his failing agenda have glommed onto a misleading data point to boast of his supposed success — celebrating the false claim that native-born U.S. workers are exclusively benefiting from job growth.

On December 16, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published its jobs report for November, which had been delayed as a result of the federal government shutdown. The report showed a labor market in clear distress with mediocre month-to-month job creation (+64,000 jobs in November), significant negative revisions of already-weak prior months (-33,000 jobs in August and September), and a rising unemployment rate (4.6% in November, the highest unemployment rate in four years). The report also contained a preliminary estimate of job creation for October (the Labor Department will never publish a report for that month) showing that the economy lost approximately 105,000 jobs.

Economist Heather Long described the new jobs report in blunt terms: “The US economy is in a hiring recession.” Harvard University economist and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Jason Furman said “the headline jobs numbers are almost uniformly weak” and the prolonged government shutdown was responsible for “only some” of the economic malaise. University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers noted “the headline numbers suggest VIRTUALLY NO EMPLOYMENT GROWTH since April (‘Liberation day’).”

The Trump administration put out the word to celebrate “native-born” workers

Minutes after the November jobs report was published, the Department of Labor posted a graphic on X (formerly Twitter) which boasted “every single job created has been in the PRIVATE SECTOR and gone to a native-born AMERICAN.”

Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni — who Trump recently failed to install at the BLS — published the same sentiment, claiming the “number of native-born Americans w/ jobs is up 2.6 million over the last 12 months.” Antoni published a December 17 op-ed in Townhall wherein he chided the Biden administration for supposedly overseeing a period where “all net job growth went to foreign-born workers.”

During a December 16 appearance on Fox News’ America Reports, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt proclaimed “what’s most remarkable about the labor market right now is that President Trump is putting American citizens back into the labor force.” Leavitt falsely added that “under the previous administration and Joe Biden, 100% of the jobs gained were for foreign-born workers — these were people who flooded our country and took the jobs of hard-working Americans.”