Trump Boasts Unemployment Bump Was Caused by His Federal Workforce Cuts: ‘Those Jobs Are Not Necessary’

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

President Donald Trump boasted on Friday that the slight uptick in unemployment last month was attributable to the cuts that his administration has made to the federal workforce.

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate had risen to a four-year high of 4.6% after adding 64,000 new jobs in November, but losing 105,000 the month before. Previous monthly estimates were also revised in the wrong direction. While the bureau had previously reported the economy lost 4,000 jobs in August and gained 119,000 in September, it now says those figures were 26,000 and 108,000, respectively.

In a Friday Truth Social post, Trump addressed the news by declaring that “The only reason our Unemployment ticked up to 4.5% is because we are reducing the Government Workforce by numbers that have never been seen before.”

“100% OF OUR NEW JOBS ARE IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR! I could reduce Unemployment to 2% overnight by just hiring people into the Federal Government, even though those Jobs are not necessary. I wish the Fake News would report the 4.5% correctly. What I am doing is the only way to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he concluded.

According to one recent analysis from the Cato Institute, the Department of Government Efficiency, the Trump task force run by Elon Musk for the first few months of the former’s administration, cut federal employment by 271,000, a nine percent decline since January 2025.

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