Patriot Brief
Trump’s labor market shows stronger gains than headline job numbers suggest.
Workers under Trump are moving from multiple part-time jobs into full-time employment.
Rising real wages and private-sector growth signal improving conditions for working Americans.
If you only look at the headline number, you miss the story — and that’s exactly what’s been happening with the latest jobs report under President Donald Trump.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 50,000 jobs added in December, a figure that sounds modest at best. Critics rushed to treat it as evidence of stagnation. But that reaction assumes the headline payroll number is the most important metric. It isn’t. As Heritage Foundation chief economist E.J. Antoni points out, the underlying data tells a very different — and much more encouraging — story.
The household survey showed employment rising by 232,000 people. That gap matters. It reflects a labor market where workers are consolidating jobs, not scrambling for extra ones. In December alone, the number of Americans holding multiple jobs fell by 444,000, while full-time employment surged by nearly 900,000. Part-time work dropped sharply.
That’s not weakness. That’s progress.
Under Biden, inflation forced millions of Americans to stack jobs just to stay afloat. When prices hit a 40-year high in 2022, taking on second or third jobs became a necessity, not a choice. That inflated payroll counts while masking economic stress. Trump’s labor market is showing the opposite dynamic: fewer payrolls, more stability.
This distinction matters because jobs aren’t interchangeable. One full-time job with predictable income and benefits is worth far more than three part-time gigs stitched together out of desperation. When someone trades multiple part-time roles for a single full-time position, the payroll count goes down — but the worker’s life improves.
There’s also the composition of job growth. Antoni notes that all net job gains in 2025 came from the private sector, while federal employment declined by more than 270,000 positions. That’s not an accident. The Biden years saw the federal workforce balloon past three million. Shrinking government payrolls while expanding private-sector employment isn’t a drag on the economy — it’s a sign of rebalancing.
Add rising real wages to the picture and the trend becomes clearer. With wage growth now outpacing inflation, workers are finally getting ahead instead of falling further behind. That’s the metric that matters most at the kitchen table.
The headline number may look unexciting. The reality underneath it is anything but. When you dig into the data, Trump’s labor market isn’t about more jobs at any cost — it’s about better jobs. And for working Americans, that’s the difference between surviving and actually moving forward.
From Western Journal:
The top economist at the Heritage Foundation made a compelling case for why President Donald Trump’s jobs numbers are better than the headline figure indicates.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week that a total of 50,000 jobs were added to the economy in December. That’s a holding-steady number. Given the country’s population, it takes upward of 50,000 new jobs to keep the unemployment rate about constant.
Such was true last month when the unemployment rate dropped slightly, by 0.1 percent to 4.4 percent.
The Heritage Foundation’s chief economist, E.J. Antoni, pointed out in a piece for Townhall.com that if you look a little deeper at U.S. employment, there’s some very encouraging information, especially for those holding down multiple jobs to make ends meet.
He highlighted the discrepancy between the 50,000 news jobs figure and the survey of households’ total, finding that the number of people employed in the country jumped by 232,000.
“There’s an explanation for this difference if we dig further into the report, and it indicates a very positive development in the labor market,” Antoni argued.
“The number of multiple jobholders plunged by 444,000 last month, the second-largest drop since the government-imposed Covid lockdowns. Simultaneously in December, the number of part-time jobs declined by 740,000 while full-time employment shot up by 890,000,” he added.
In other words, people — including that mom who might be holding down three jobs — are exchanging part-time gigs for full-time employment.
Antoni elaborated, writing, “Let’s say someone quits three of those part-time jobs and replaces them all with a single full-time one. That’s a net reduction of two payrolls, so it reduces the headline jobs number even though the person is better off. This is very likely the dynamic that was at play last month, hence the number of people employed rose more than four times faster than the number of jobs.”
This is the opposite dynamic that happened under former President Joe Biden, when inflation shot up to 9.1 percent, a 40-year-high, by June 2022.
People were struggling to pay their bills, so they took second and third jobs.
Overall, the BLS reported that there were just 584,000 jobs created in 2025, versus approximately 2 million added in 2024.
But, Antoni noted, “All the net job growth in 2025 came from the productive private sector, while government jobs declined, due entirely to federal layoffs. It’s a positive development, but it drags down the headline jobs number.”
The BLS reported that federal employment is down 277,000 from January of last year.
Biden presided over a nearly 6 percent increase in the size of the full-time federal workforce during his tenure, with the total cresting 3 million in September 2024 for the first time since 1990, according to USA Facts.
The current number of federal employees is 2.744 million, the lowest since late 2014.
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