Klaus Marre 05/12/26 (whowhatwhy.org)
Whether it was unwittingly or not, the way the media covered the April jobs report was a massive journalistic fail and made a non-accomplishment sound like a big win.
There is a long list of media failures when it comes to the coverage of Donald Trump and his administration. Too many reporters regurgitate obvious lies and propaganda without conducting simple fact checks or providing necessary context. Few of them dare to point out the president’s precarious mental state or that he seems to live in a fantasy world of his own creation.
When journalists do uncover important information that the public deserves to know, they frequently hold on to it for future “tell all” books. And, of course, it’s not great that some news organizations are settling bogus lawsuits to appease the president.
And then there is what we call the “low expectations game.”
That’s when Trump does something that is wholly unremarkable, yet the media treats it like a real accomplishment.
Like Friday’s jobs report.
Before we get to that, it’s important to note that attributing employment gains and losses to presidents is a bit of a fool’s errand. Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden are great examples of this.
Six years ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that the economy had lost 20.5 million jobs in April of 2020 and that the unemployment rate had shot up to 14.7 percent. This happened on Trump’s watch, but it was obviously not his fault. Rather, it was the result of the full effects of the coronavirus pandemic hitting the US economy.
Conversely, people started hiring again when the worst of the pandemic was over, and this greatly benefitted Biden, who oversaw a hiring boom (while being hurt by pandemic-related supply chain issues and other problems that led to massive inflation in the first couple of years of his presidency).
The point is that, sometimes, the fate of the economy hinges on events outside the control of presidents and even they are just along for the ride. Some of them get lucky and take the helm at a time of great prosperity, and others experience the opposite.
Still, long after the pandemic was over, companies kept increasing their payrolls while Biden was in office (although hiring slowed significantly in his last year). In fact, even taking into account the substantial downward revisions made after the BLS announced its initial estimates, we now know that the economy added jobs in every full month of his presidency.
That has not been the case for Trump in his second term.
In the 15 full months since he took over, employers shed jobs five times. His best month came this March, when payrolls increased by 185,000 (a mark his predecessor eclipsed three times in 2024).
If you compare Biden’s last 15 months in office to Trump’s first 15 months (not counting the one they shared), then you’ll see that the former averaged 126,000 jobs added compared to the latter’s 31,000.
And that brings us to Friday’s BLS report (by the way, the above is what we mean by “providing context”).
It showed that payrolls were up 115,000.
Based on everything you just learned, that’s pretty good… but only if measured by Trump’s low standards.
April was his 3rd best month but would only have been Biden’s 41st best.
Keeping that in mind, you’d think that the response would have been somewhere between “muted optimism” and the kind of encouragement you give a child when he brings you a drawing of a horse that actually looks like a dog.
After all, an increase of 115,000 new payrolls is pretty pathetic… and that’s not according to our standards, but rather Trump’s.
Right before the 2024 election, he proclaimed that job growth of 250,000 is “almost automatic” (although he has achieved that mark only seven times in more than five years in office).
Unsurprisingly, Republicans were ecstatic.
“Strong April jobs report. Added 115,000 new jobs — nearly double expectations,” stated loyal MAGA disciple Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). “President Trump’s economy is working.”
No argument there. The president’s personal economy is working. After all, he has nearly tripled his own wealth since taking office.
As for everybody else… Well, that’s another story.
Another thing Jordan mentioned, however, merits a closer look.
The lawmaker, as well as other Republicans and the president himself, made reference to a survey of “experts,” which had predicted that job growth in April would only be about 60,000.
And this is where the first media failure comes into play.
Who gives a hoot what these experts think? Their prediction is completely irrelevant. It’s like asking someone to weigh in on what the Powerball numbers might be before the drawing.
Sure, economists can guess if they want, and even have their own office pool for all we care, but that doesn’t change the fact that their forecast is meaningless.
Objectively, 115,000 isn’t an impressive number, and with apologies to House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), it is certainly not “HUGE.” To be clear, it’s not terrible either, just nothing to write home about nor evidence that the “Trump economy is working.”
However, because “experts” felt things would be much worse, all of a sudden, the employment report went from pedestrian to “strong,” with most news outlets making reference to the figures being “surprising” or “beating expectations,” which isn’t exactly difficult when they are so low.
Essentially, just about every reporter covering this story made the jobs numbers sound a lot better than they were — both objectively and, as we have demonstrated, historically.
However, that wasn’t the media’s biggest failure.
Here, for example, is how The Washington Post started its article:
Employers added 115,000 jobs in April, notching a strong gain for the economy as it faces headwinds from soaring fuel prices, tariffs and immigration restrictions.
Other outlets also pointed out that the US economy is facing the challenges mentioned above.
What most of them did not do — and certainly didn’t do emphatically — is to note that they are all of Trump’s own making.
As we pointed out before, it is often unfair to blame presidents for some of the things that happen on their watch, like a pandemic or a resulting supply-chain crisis.
However, in this case, the problems are entirely self-inflicted.
The “soaring fuel prices” are the direct result of Trump’s war with Iran. Without the attack, and the resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz, they would be more than $1/gallon less.
Then there are the tariffs. Even after the Supreme Court declared them to be illegal, and it has been shown that American companies and consumers are forced to shoulder their cost, the president just keeps on trying to impose them — and even an adverse ruling in another case last week won’t stop him.
Finally, even his own administration has admitted that Trump’s aggressive deportation policies are a threat to an affordable food supply.
The fact that most stories failed to explicitly mention these things is not only a dereliction of duty but, unfortunately, also not much of a surprise and on par with the incredibly poor handling of the day-to-day coverage of this administration.
- Klaus Marre Klaus Marre, a former congressional reporter, is a senior editor for US politics at WhoWhatWhy. He writes regularly here, and you can also follow him on Bluesky and Substack.
