Another Jobs Disaster

Outside of healthcare and private education, the US economy lost 7,000 jobs in January

Mainstream media are practically giddy about a January jobs report that shows 130,000 non-farm jobs were created in January 2026.

The giddiness is particularly apparent on CNBC, where the headline number of 130,000 jobs "surpassed expectations" and where one CEO says, "the better-than-expected data allows the bulls to resume the rally in search of new S&P 500 all-time highs."

I'm old enough to remember when CNBC thought jobs numbers like these were a major disappointment.

Oh right, that was when Obama was president. In those days, creating 142,000 jobs was enough to "cool expectations" and be described by one Chief Investment Officer as, "disappointing across the board."

When Obama was president, of course, at least one prominent businessman said anything under 300,000 jobs per month was a recessionary indicator.

A closer look at the January jobs report shows that, outside of healthcare and private education, the US economy lost 7,000 jobs in January, with the biggest drops in government (-42,000 jobs), financial (-22,000 jobs) and transportation and warehousing (-11,000 jobs).

And if January was bad, we just learned that 2025 was even worse than previously reported.

NEW: Trump's 2025 jobs numbers were overstated by more than 200%

According to The New York Times:

U.S. employers added just 181,000 jobs last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday, 69 percent fewer than its initial estimate of 584,000.

In other words, more than 2 out of 3 jobs we thought Trump created in 2025 were completely imaginary.

We previously knew that 2025 was the worst year for job creation in a non-recession year since 2003 — and that all of the gains were driven entirely by the needs of our aging population.

But once again, as it always is with Trump, we now know the reality was even worse than what we were originally told.

And it's still getting worse.

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