President Donald Trump’s bold claims that his policies have led to an unprecedented job boom for American-born workers are at odds with data showing markets are weaker than under his predecessor.
Trump, 79, has repeatedly boasted that all the new jobs created since he returned to office have gone to American-born workers. “The year before I was elected, all net job creation went to foreign immigrants. Since I took office, 100 percent of all net job creation has gone to American-born citizens,” Trump said in an address to the nation last month. “One hundred percent.”
Donald Trump has been cracking down on illegal immigration since returning to the White House last January. /Nick Antaya/Getty Images
Administration officials repeated the rhetoric, saying on X in November that Trump “has been nothing short of historic in what he’s done for our workforce.”
“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 Department of Labor’s X account posted.
Meanwhile, Trump’s right-hand man, Vice President Vance, has been an active supporter of the administration’s handling of the economy.
Just last month, Vance graded Trump’s economic performance an “A++++” amid pessimistic unemployment data.
He also praised the administration for “bringing jobs back to America.”
“For 40 years, our country has had a policy of shipping American jobs overseas… There will be one huge exception to this 40-year trajectory of decline in the United States, and that’s the second Trump administration,” he said in a discussion with Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle in Washington, D.C.
Economists, however, believe Trump is bluffing. The labor market itself is already softening, leaving U.S.-born workers slightly worse off than they were under former President Joe Biden, The Washington Post reported on Friday, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
“Unemployment is rising among 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 Washington Post.
Experts have questioned Donald Trump’s bold jobs claims. / Wyn McNamee/ Getty Images
The unemployment rate among native-born workers was higher in late 2025 than a year earlier, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unseasonally adjusted unemployment rate among U.S.-born workers increased from 3.9% in November 2024 to 4.3% in November 2025.
Trump’s claims that his immigration policies are creating job market opportunities for U.S.-born workers are “false and based on a misreading of household survey data,” according to the Economic Policy Institute.
“If anything, the job market for U.S.-born workers so far in 2025 is worse than in previous years,” senior economist Ben Zipperer wrote in September.
AugustJed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs under Biden, accused the president of committing “multiple data felonies” in touting a jobs boom here in the United States.
“Unconscious nitpicking does not change the simple fact that President Trump has done more for American workers than any president in history, including combating visa program abuses, successfully negotiating new trade deals, securing our borders and conducting the largest mass deportations of illegal aliens,” White House spokesman Taylor Rogers said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Rogers said these policies ensure “American-born workers can ultimately benefit from our new economic recovery.”
