The Claim

Created 654,000 private-sector jobs following deregulation, tax relief, and restored investment confidence.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

Three things: (1) that 654,000 private-sector jobs were created during the first year of the Trump administration, (2) that these jobs resulted from three specific policy levers — deregulation, tax relief, and restored investment confidence, and (3) that framing employment as “private-sector” is the appropriate measure of job creation.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That the labor market strengthened under this administration. That deregulation, tax cuts, and “confidence” causally drove job creation. That “private-sector” framing gives a more honest picture than total employment. That 654,000 is a large and impressive number.

What is conspicuously absent?

The number has been superseded by benchmark revisions. The BLS annual benchmark revision, released February 11, 2026, retroactively reduced total nonfarm employment by 862,000 jobs for the April 2024-March 2025 period. Post-revision FRED data shows only 372,000 private-sector jobs were added from January to December 2025 — not 654,000. Also absent: any acknowledgment that 2025 was the weakest year for job creation outside a recession since 2003. That the “private-sector” framing conveniently excludes 277,000 federal jobs destroyed by DOGE. That manufacturing — the sector most closely associated with deregulation and investment — lost 63,000-83,000 jobs. That health care and social assistance accounted for essentially all net job growth. That tariff uncertainty — a direct policy choice — drove businesses to cut hiring plans. That the One Big Beautiful Bill was not signed until July 4, 2025, and most provisions take effect in 2026.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

The BLS post-benchmark-revision data shows 372,000 private-sector jobs were added from January to December 2025, and 518,000 from January 2025 to January 2026 — not 654,000. FRED series USPRIV (All Employees, Total Private) shows seasonally adjusted private employment at 134,711,000 in January 2025 and 135,083,000 in December 2025, a gain of 372,000. Through January 2026, the level was 135,229,000, a 12-month gain of 518,000. The 654,000 figure was based on pre-benchmark-revision data. The February 2026 benchmark revision reduced total nonfarm employment by 862,000 for the April 2024-March 2025 period, with private-sector employment specifically revised down by approximately 880,000. ¹

Total nonfarm employment grew by only 181,000 in calendar year 2025 (post-revision), the weakest year for job creation outside a recession since 2003. The pre-revision figure was 584,000; the benchmark revision reduced this to 181,000, averaging approximately 15,000 jobs per month. By comparison, the economy added 2.23 million jobs in 2024. The preceding 11 months (February 2024-January 2025) saw 1,414,000 private-sector jobs added — more than double the post-revision figure for Trump’s first year. ²

Job growth in 2025 was overwhelmingly concentrated in health care and social assistance, not in sectors tied to deregulation or investment. Health care added approximately 405,000 jobs and social assistance added approximately 308,000 — a combined 713,000. Without these two sectors, the broader labor market would have posted net job losses. Manufacturing lost 63,000-83,000 jobs. Goods-producing sectors as a whole contracted. ³

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed July 4, 2025. Most individual tax provisions take effect in 2026. The legislation was passed by the House on July 3 (218-214 vote) and signed the next day. The Tax Foundation projects it will increase long-run GDP by 0.7%, but most individual-facing tax changes (standard deduction increase, no-tax-on-tips, etc.) apply beginning in tax year 2026. Business expensing provisions could theoretically have affected Q3-Q4 2025 investment decisions, but the labor market data shows continued weakness through year-end. ⁴

Federal government employment declined by approximately 277,000 during 2025 due to DOGE-driven workforce reductions. Between January 2025 and January 2026, the federal workforce shrank by approximately 242,000 net (after accounting for new hires), representing over 10% of the federal workforce. The “private-sector” framing of the jobs claim excludes these losses from the headline figure. ⁵

Strong Inferences

The claim’s causal attribution to “deregulation, tax relief, and restored investment confidence” is unsupported by the evidence and contradicted by Federal Reserve survey data. The Atlanta Fed’s May 2025 survey found that businesses planned to slow hiring by 13% and scale back investment by 16% due to trade policy uncertainty. The Boston Fed found tariff uncertainty surged from 5.8 to 13.4 percentage points among SMBs between December 2024 and April 2025. Around 25% of CFO Survey respondents planned to reduce hiring and capital spending in response to tariffs. More than 5% of firms imposed effective hiring freezes. The administration’s own tariff policy was the primary source of the uncertainty that depressed investment and hiring — the opposite of “restored investment confidence.” ⁶

The JOLTS data shows a labor market that was softening, not strengthening, throughout 2025. Job openings fell to 6.5 million in December 2025 — the lowest since December 2017. The ratio of job openings to unemployed job seekers fell to 0.9, the lowest since March 2021. The quits rate remained depressed at 2.0%, below its 2019 average — a sign of worker caution, not labor market health. Nearly 1 million more people were unemployed than there were job openings by year-end, the widest such gap outside the pandemic since 2017. ⁷

The “deregulation” cited in the claim consisted primarily of executive orders directing future action, not completed regulatory changes with measurable economic impact. EO 14192 (“Unleashing Prosperity through Deregulation”), signed January 31, 2025, established a 10-to-1 deregulation-to-regulation ratio as a goal and directed agencies to propose repeals. Additional orders in April 2025 addressed energy regulation sunset provisions and competition reviews. Brookings’ regulatory tracker shows the deregulatory effort was largely aspirational through 2025 — orders directing agencies to identify regulations for repeal, not completed repeal actions that businesses could respond to with hiring. ⁸

What the Evidence Shows

The 654,000 figure was stale before it was published. The White House claim, appearing in the January 20, 2026 “365 Wins” list, relied on pre-benchmark-revision BLS data. Three weeks later, on February 11, the BLS released its annual benchmark revision, which retroactively reduced total nonfarm employment by 862,000 jobs. Post-revision FRED data shows 372,000 private-sector jobs added in calendar year 2025 — a 43% reduction from the claimed figure. Even using the more generous January-to-January measurement (518,000), the number falls well short of 654,000.

The causal chain is even weaker than the number. The claim credits three policy levers: deregulation, tax relief, and restored investment confidence. But the administration’s signature economic policy — tariffs — actively undermined all three. Federal Reserve banks in Atlanta and Boston independently documented that tariff uncertainty was the primary driver of businesses pulling back on hiring and investment. The “deregulation” consisted largely of executive orders directing future regulatory review, not completed actions with measurable economic effects. The “tax relief” (the One Big Beautiful Bill) was not signed until July 4, 2025, with most provisions taking effect in 2026. And “restored investment confidence” is directly contradicted by the Federal Reserve’s own survey data showing confidence collapsed due to trade policy uncertainty.

The “private-sector” framing is itself revealing. Total nonfarm employment grew by only 181,000 in 2025 (post-revision). By specifying “private-sector,” the claim excludes the 277,000 federal jobs destroyed by DOGE — losses that are a direct consequence of administration policy. The framing says, in effect: count the jobs we claim to have created, but do not count the jobs we deliberately destroyed. Even accepting the private-sector frame, the jobs that were created came overwhelmingly from health care and social assistance — sectors driven by demographic demand and Medicaid funding, not by deregulation or tax cuts. Manufacturing, the sector most closely associated with industrial deregulation and investment, lost jobs throughout the year.

The labor market indicators tell a consistent story of deterioration, not strength. Job openings fell to their lowest level since 2017. The quits rate remained depressed. The employment-to-population ratio declined. And by year-end, there were nearly a million more unemployed Americans than available job openings — a reversal of the tight labor market the administration inherited.

The Bottom Line

The number is wrong, the attribution is unsupported, and the framing is designed to hide the administration’s own job destruction. Post-benchmark-revision BLS data shows 372,000-518,000 private-sector jobs were added (depending on the time period), not 654,000. The claimed causes — deregulation, tax relief, and restored investment confidence — are contradicted by Federal Reserve survey data showing the administration’s tariff policy was the primary driver of reduced hiring and investment. The “private-sector” framing excludes 277,000 federal jobs eliminated by DOGE, and the jobs that were created came almost entirely from health care — a sector unrelated to the claimed policy mechanisms. The claim presents the weakest year for job creation outside a recession since 2003 as an achievement, using an outdated number, a misleading frame, and an unsupported causal story.

Footnotes

1. BLS/FRED, USPRIV series (All Employees, Total Private), accessed 2026-03-18. Post-benchmark-revision data. BLS CES National Benchmark Article, released 2026-02-11. ↩

2. BLS Employment Situation releases; KPMG Economics analysis of January 2026 report; FactCheck.org “Trump’s Numbers, Second Term” (2026-01-20, pre-revision context). ↩

3. NBC News, “Gains in health care, declines in manufacturing highlight tough year for U.S. job market” (2026-01-09); BLS Employment Situation monthly releases. ↩

4. Tax Foundation, “One Big Beautiful Bill Act Tax Policies: Details and Analysis”; IRS, “One Big Beautiful Bill Provisions”; Ways and Means Committee press release (2025-07-03). ↩

5. NPR, “Officially, 59,000 federal jobs are gone under Trump. There’s more to the picture” (2025-06-04); Cato Institute, “DOGE Produced the Largest Peacetime Workforce Cut on Record” (2026); BLS Employment Situation data showing federal employment decline. ↩

6. Atlanta Fed Macroblog, “Uncertainty over (Trade) Policy Will Cut Hiring and Investment” (2025-05-15); Boston Fed Current Policy Perspectives, “Effects of Tariff Uncertainty on the Outlook of Small and Medium-sized Businesses” (2025). ↩

7. Indeed Hiring Lab, “December 2025 JOLTS Report: Balance or Breaking Point?” (2026-02-05); BLS JOLTS data. ↩

8. White House, “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Launches Massive 10-to-1 Deregulation Initiative” (2025-01-31); Brookings Institution, “Tracking regulatory changes in the second Trump administration”; Federal Register, EO 14192 (2025-02-06). ↩