The Trump administration has recorded some impressive jobs numbers over the past year, consistently beating expectations. But perhaps the most remarkable part about the job market under Trump is that it has remained strong in spite of significant cuts to the federal workforce.
The most recent data shows that the economy added 172,000 new private sector jobs in January, blowing past “expert” predictions of 70,000. Overall, about 615,000 private-sector jobs have been added since Trump took office, while the unemployment rate has dropped to 4.3 percent.
At the same time – fulfilling a key campaign promise to cut government bloat – the federal workforce has been hemorrhaging employees, with 42,000 cuts last month alone. Federal employment is now at its lowest level since 1966, with more than 270,000 federal positions cut since January 2025.
As Trump relayed in his State of the Union Address last week, 100 percent of the net job creation during his second term has occurred in the private sector. That dramatic growth contrasts sharply with the Biden years, when a significant portion of the jobs numbers that Democrats touted were public-sector jobs funded by taxpayers.
During the Biden years, government employment reached 23.1 million workers — a “record high,” according to economist Stephen Moore — with roughly half of all new hires concentrated in government or healthcare, a sector that is heavily subsidized by the government.
Economist E.J. Antoni likewise observed that “two-thirds of all jobs added in Biden’s last year were directly or indirectly funded by taxpayer dollars, while manufacturing [jobs] fell almost 100,000 – completely unsustainable.”
Subsequent revisions have made the picture even less flattering for the Biden administration. According to the White House release, job growth during Biden’s final two years was overstated by 1.9 million positions.
As AMAC reported last summer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) repeatedly revised Biden-era job gains downward after initial release, in some cases by tens of thousands of jobs per month. Over a 12-month stretch from March 2023 to March 2024, downward adjustments totaled 818,000 jobs — an average revision of more than 68,000 per month and five times the agency’s typical margin of error.
As AMAC also noted, those revisions matter because the first number shapes the public narrative. It drives headlines, market reactions, and political messaging. Revisions often arrive later, after the initial story has taken hold.
Revisions are a normal feature of labor reporting. But the direction and magnitude of adjustments are not meaningless. During Biden’s final years, the pattern leaned heavily toward downward correction, raising speculation that the figures were artificially inflated for political purposes. Seeming to support this theory, Biden and later Kamala Harris relied heavily on supposedly strong jobs numbers (in part fueled by natural rebound following pandemic closures) for their economic messaging.
Remove the supports of expanding government payrolls and inflated data, and the true labor market that Trump inherited suddenly looks far weaker than the Biden administration led Americans to believe. Under President Trump, the opposite dynamic is unfolding. Federal employment is declining, and job gains are concentrated in the private sector and among native-born Americans, yet overall growth continues to exceed expectations.
That’s the difference between government-funded hiring and market-driven expansion. One relies on the federal government adding names to a payroll. The other depends on individuals risking capital, making plans, and hiring people because they have genuine confidence in the future of the American economy.
Just as importantly, the White House reports that 100 percent of job growth during Trump’s second term has occurred among native-born Americans – another sharp reversal from the Biden administration. As Antoni additionally noted, citing BLS data, employment among foreign-born workers increased by 4.4 million under Biden, while employment among native-born Americans declined by 833,000. Under Trump, meanwhile, foreign-born employment declined by 670,000 in 2025, while native-born employment increased by 2.5 million.
Wages are rising alongside hiring. Average weekly earnings increased 0.7 percent in January and have grown by 4.3 percent since Trump took office. Real wages are up more than $1,000 after declining by more than $3,000 during the Biden years.
Those gains are largely concentrated in construction and production-heavy fields. Construction employment rose by 33,000 in January, including 25,000 new jobs in nonresidential specialty trades — the biggest monthly jump in five years.
A labor market propped up by federal expansion can look strong on paper. One that grows even as the government shrinks is a different animal entirely. It reflects genuine demand from Americans making real bets on the future, not bureaucratic expansion bankrolled by the American taxpayer.
Right now, the structure of the labor market is changing in ways that matter for every American. The federal government is getting smaller. The economy is getting stronger. For those who have long argued that Washington produces too little, the data is finally moving in the right direction.
Sarah Katherine Sisk is a proud Hillsdale College alumna and a master’s student in economics at George Mason University. You can follow her on X @SKSisk76.
