David Manney writes for PJMedia.com about important details hidden by the latest American employment numbers.
President Donald Trump got handed an ugly jobs headline Friday. The economy lost 23,000 payroll jobs in July, and revisions erased another 103,000 jobs from May and June. …
… That can’t be dressed up; a weak jobs report is a weak jobs report.
But buried one line deeper is a number worth noticing. Private employers added 30,000 jobs in July while government payrolls fell by 53,000. If government employment had simply remained flat, the headline number would’ve been a gain of 30,000 jobs.
Statistics can tell very different stories depending on where somebody stops reading. The easiest headline is “23,000 jobs lost.”
It’s accurate, but so is “private employers added 30,000 jobs.”
So is “government employment fell 53,000.”
We deserve all three numbers because together they show what actually happened.
The government decline needs context, too. Of the 53,000 jobs lost, 50,000 came from local government education. Federal employment fell by only 3,000 in July. Giving Trump credit for all 53,000 would be just as misleading as pretending the private-sector gain never happened.
The larger federal trend, however, belongs squarely in Trump’s column. Office of Personnel Management data show the federal workforce has lost 272,283 employees since Trump took office on Jan. 30, 2025. …
… His administration imposed a hiring freeze, encouraged early retirement, pursued reductions in force, and offered deferred resignations as part of a deliberate effort to shrink Washington.
For decades, politicians have promised smaller government the way some people promise to start exercising Monday. Washington usually survives the speech and hires somebody else by Tuesday.
Trump’s administration has actually reduced the federal headcount by hundreds of thousands.
A Democrat once supplied the slogan.
During his 1996 State of the Union address, then-President Bill Clinton told Congress, “The era of big government is over.”
