Shocked by Trump’s humiliating reality check about jobs for US-born workers

President Donald Trump’s bold claim that his policies have delivered an unprecedented job boom for American-born workers is at odds with data showing a weaker market than his predecessor.

Trump, 79, has repeatedly boasted that all new jobs have gone to American-born workers since he returned to office. “In the year before my election, all job creation went to foreign immigrants. Since I took office, 100 percent of all job creation has gone to American-born citizens,” Trump said during his address to the nation last month. “One hundred percent.”

Administration officials have blasted that rhetoric, saying at X in November that what Trump is “doing for our workforce is nothing short of historic.”

“While other presidents have allowed foreign workers to flood the job market, President Trump is working to ensure that all jobs created go to our workers,” the US Department of Labor’s X account posted.

Meanwhile, Trump’s right-hand man, Vice President J.D. Vance, has been aggressively supporting his administration’s handling of the economy.

Just last month, against a backdrop of pessimistic unemployment data, Vance rated Trump’s economic performance “A plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.”

He also praised the administration for “bringing jobs back to America.”

“We’ve had a policy of shipping American jobs overseas for 40 years in this country … there will be a big exception to the 40-year projection of American decline, and that’s the second Trump administration,” he said in a conversation with Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle in Washington, D.C.

However, economists have said that Trump’s threat. Citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Washington Post reported Friday that the labor market itself has weakened, making U.S.-born workers generally worse off than during former President Joe Biden’s tenure.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.

“The unemployment rate is rising for both native-born and foreign-born adults,” Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former Commerce Department economist, told the Post.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment among native-born workers was higher at the end of 2025 than it was a year earlier. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for US-born workers rose from 3.9 percent in November 2024 to 4.3 percent in November 2025.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, Trump’s claim that his immigration policy is creating job opportunities for US-born workers is “false and based on a misreading of household survey data.”

“If anything, the job market for US-born workers is worse in 2025 than it was last year,” senior economist Ben Zipperer wrote in September.

in AugustJed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and undersecretary for economic affairs at the U.S. Commerce Department under Biden, accused Trump of “multi-count data crimes” over the president’s job boom for native-born Americans.

White House spokesman Taylor Rogers said in a statement to the Post, “Thoughtless nitpicking doesn’t change the simple fact that no president in history has done more for American workers by abusing the visa program, successfully negotiating new trade deals, securing our borders, and mass deportations of illegal aliens.”

Rogers said those policies “will allow American-born workers to finally benefit from our new economic recovery.”