White House economist touts ‘really profound’ shift in the economy that Trump-haters aren’t ready to admit

The latest jobs report appeared to support a White House official’s argument that many “highly skilled” federal employees are wasted in “government work that isn’t much value.”

(Video Credit: Fox Business)

As Capitol Hill clashes continued over what truly needed to be part of the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the May jobs report showed payrolls were on the rise and unemployment sat at 4.2%. Taking a closer look at the details, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett contended that some of that growth was thanks to shrinking the federal workforce.

On Fox Business’s “Kudlow” Friday, host Larry Kudlow pointed out that 59,000 jobs were shed from the federal government since January, “And while that’s been happening, Kevin, private payrolls are now running ahead of their year-ago, 12-month average. For example, this month private payrolls [are] up 140,000. The 12-month average for private payrolls is [122,000]. So … the government stuff’s coming down, and the private stuff’s coming up.”

“Yeah, it’s a really profound shift in the economy,” responded Hassett, who went on to refer to an economics paper on what happens when a government worker loses their job.

“The bottom line is … if the federal government workers are, you know, they’re hardworking, a lot of them are highly skilled, but they’re sitting doing government work that isn’t much value,” the director said. “And then when they lose their government job, which happened in the past because of state cuts, then it usually creates about two jobs — one for them and one for someone else — because actually, if you put them to work in the private sector, then it’s great for them and great for the private sector.”

Of the nearly 60,000 jobs cut from the federal workforce, roughly 22,000 came in May as the administration contended with lawfare obstructing President Donald Trump’s authority over the executive branch. Despite the myriad legal challenges, reports indicated 500,000 jobs had been created, which was noted to be a stark contrast to the previous administration, where job creation relied on bloating the government.

“We’ve radically outperformed the expectation,” the director said regarding the last three months amid corporate media talk of recession. “If you go into the details, they’re astonishingly exactly what President Trump talked about on the campaign trail.”

After proceeding to smack down the narrative that mass deportations would result in more economic troubles, “’cause there aren’t enough Americans to do the jobs,” Hassett pointed out that the job creation was being driven by native-born workers because, as analysts have argued, illegal aliens seeking work in the United States take jobs from those “who need them the most already in America.”

“And of course, core inflation right now is the lowest its been by every indicator for more than four years and wage growth is really high. So this is Donald Trump’s economy just like it was in ’17, ’18 and ’19. We’re seeing it right now right there in the data,” he added as an exclamation point on the strides taken since the beginning of the administration, without even touching on the trillions of dollars of investments that had been committed from abroad.

Staff Writer

Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.

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