{"id":284966,"date":"2026-02-11T02:43:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T02:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/284966\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T02:43:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T02:43:10","slug":"white-house-downplays-coming-jobs-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/284966\/","title":{"rendered":"White House downplays coming jobs report"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A much-anticipated labor market update isn’t due out until Wednesday morning<\/a>, but the White House is already working to temper expectations.<\/p>\n

Members of President Trump’s team have offered multiple warnings that employment gains may disappoint Wall Street and have tried to downplay what a miss might indicate about the state of the US economy.<\/p>\n

“One shouldn’t panic,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC on Monday<\/a> in a clear message to investors. “You should expect slightly smaller job numbers.”<\/p>\n

But he said the results may not be a sign of broader trouble, explaining the potentially smaller numbers as a combination of a “productivity boom” and “a pretty big decline in the labor force because of illegals leaving the country.”<\/p>\n

The president himself indirectly weighed in on the subject during an interview that aired Tuesday on the Fox Business Network.<\/p>\n

During a discussion of government cuts, the president said “I’ve cut hundreds of thousands of jobs and we still have good employment numbers” before suggesting he could have “the greatest employment numbers you’ve ever seen” if he’d left government payrolls untouched or hired more.<\/p>\n

\"PALM President Trump steps off of Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport on Feb. 6. (Samuel Corum\/Getty Images) \u00b7 Samuel Corum via Getty Images <\/p>\n

The jobs report for the month of January \u2014 delayed five days due to the partial government shutdown \u2014 is set to be released on Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. ET.<\/p>\n

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect about 70,000 nonfarm payroll jobs were created last month, but the estimates have varied widely. The highest saw 135,000 jobs added last month, while the lowest indicated a loss of 10,000 positions.<\/p>\n

The unemployment rate is expected to remain steady at 4.4%.<\/p>\n

Read more: How a CD can help you prepare for \u2014 and survive \u2014 a layoff<\/a><\/p>\n

The report comes amid a variety of signs that the US labor market could be on shaky ground. ADP reported last week that private employers added just 22,000 jobs in January<\/a>, about half of what economists had expected.<\/p>\n

The BLS’s recent Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed job openings shrinking to the lowest level since 2020<\/a>. Data from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed layoff announcements in January hit the highest level since 2009<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The economy added 50,000 jobs in December, capping off the worst year of hiring since 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We are seeing pressure,” Manulife John Hancock Investments co-chief investment strategist Emily Roland told Yahoo Finance, <\/a>noting three recent subpar jobs reports.<\/p>\n

\"LAKE A career fair in Lake Forest, Calif., is seen in 2024. (Paul Bersebach\/MediaNews Group\/Orange County Register via Getty Images) \u00b7 MediaNews Group\/Orange County Register via Getty Images via Getty Images <\/p>\n

The atmosphere has led to numerous warnings from the White House team with a variety of explanations, including from ongoing immigration operations to increased productivity from AI to government cutting efforts.<\/p>\n

Trump’s senior trade counselor, Peter Navarro, pushed the message on Tuesday and emphasized the immigration angle during a Fox Business appearance.<\/p>\n

“We have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like,” he said, suggesting that 50,000 jobs should be considered enough to keep up with population growth.<\/p>\n

Wall Street will “have to adjust for the fact that we’re deporting millions of illegals out of the job market,” he added.<\/p>\n

The political consequences of a mismatch between a growing economy and a stagnant labor market are also being acknowledged by Trump’s team.<\/p>\n

Hassett nodded to the dynamic in his Monday appearance, saying it remains an open question of “what’s going to happen to jobs as productivity goes up?”<\/p>\n

He didn’t offer a firm prediction but said there remains a chance that “job creation lags.”<\/p>\n

This story has been updated with additional developments.<\/p>\n

Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.<\/p>\n

Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow’s stock prices<\/a><\/p>\n

Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A much-anticipated labor market update isn’t due out until Wednesday morning, but the White House is already working…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,145985,11881,77071,1077,85,46,3533,4273,27432,1009,145986,7421],"class_list":{"0":"post-284966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-employment-numbers","11":"tag-expectations","12":"tag-fox-business-network","13":"tag-getty-images","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-jobs-report","17":"tag-kevin-hassett","18":"tag-national-economic-council","19":"tag-president-trump","20":"tag-samuel-corum","21":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}