Bessent Shrugs Off Ugly Employment Numbers: 'We Don't Need to Produce as Many Jobs' as Before

The American economy lost 23,000 jobs last month, according to federal data, but US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doesn't see much cause for concern.

During a Thursday interview on CNBC, Bessent was asked about whether the most recent jobs report was a sign of the US labor market "cracking," and he replied that the data at the moment are "quite noisy."

Bessent then asserted that, thanks to Trump's mass deportation policy, "the jobs that we're seeing are going to Americans."

"After the deportations we've seen during President Trump's administration, and the closing of the border... we don't need to produce as many jobs," he said. "And what's really important here is that we are seeing a manufacturing renaissance."

In fact, there is no manufacturing jobs boom under Trump, as federal data shows the economy has lost an estimated 75,000 manufacturing jobs since the start of his second term.

Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted in a social media post that Bessent's claim about the Trump economy providing bountiful jobs to native-born US workers is also false.

"The employment rate for native-born people is down a percentage point from when Biden was in the White House," Baker wrote, "but no one expects Trump's treasury secretary to know anything about the economy."

Economist Tony Yates observed that Bessent's spin on the jobs report undermined one of the Trump administration's rationales for carrying out mass deportations.

"I love how this contradicts with the argument for the deportations—that migrants were stealing jobs from everyone else," Yates wrote. "Now the claim is that the jobs were created by migrants just as they are now gone with them."