Jobs Up, Federal Workers Down

Healthy jobs report: The federal government’s jobs report released this morning shows unexpectedly healthy employment growth in January.

According to the report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the economy added 130,000 jobs over the past month. That was enough to keep the unemployment rate steady at 4.3 percent. The reported employment growth is far in excess of economists’ anemic estimates that the economy added just 55,000 to 69,000 jobs last month.

The unemployment rate is still up from a year ago, when it sat at an even 4 percent, according to the BLS report. But an expected disastrous month of hiring did not materialize.

In even better news, the one sector of the economy undergoing an employment recession is the federal government. The BLS report states that federal payrolls shed another 34,000 jobs in January. The civilian federal workforce is down 10.9 percent from its peak in October 2024.

This is more evidence that the Trump administration’s efforts to whittle down the federal bureaucracy are succeeding on at least one metric.

As I’ve covered before, the drive of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to radically shrink the federal government’s spending was a huge flop. The savings promised by Elon Musk et al. did not materialize. We’re on track to spend more money than ever.

But, when it comes to cutting federal jobs, DOGE has succeeded in its state-slashing mission. The 327,000 people who no longer work for the feds are now free to engage in productive activity in the private sector. That’s a win for economy-wide efficiency.

Moving the goalposts: In the run-up to the report’s release, Trump administration officials made the rounds in the media to spin a bad jobs report as a good thing.

Hear President Donald Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, argue yesterday on Fox Business that low job growth would be the result of the administration’s mass deportation of illegal immigrants. Under Biden, the economy needed to add 200,000 jobs a month just to employ all the illegal immigrants entering the country, said Navarro. No longer.

Peter Navarro: “The jobs report comes out tomorrow. We have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like … Wall Street has to adjust for the fact that we’re deporting millions of illegals out of the job market.” pic.twitter.com/eat5SG59Px

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 10, 2026

On Monday, Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, possibly paraphrasing The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, said “one shouldn’t panic” at lower job growth, which he too chalked up to the administration’s deportation drive and advances in AI.

This exercise in expectations management seems unnecessary now, given how good January’s numbers are looking. Lest this spin be forgotten, it’s worth pointing out how much immigration restrictionists are trying to move the goalposts on employment.

The argument from immigration hawks has long been that deporting foreign-born workers and preventing more of them from moving to the U.S. is a good thing for overall job growth.

The fewer foreigners working peacefully and productively means there are more employment opportunities for native-born Americans, the thinking goes. The Trump administration made this exact case last month in an article published on the White House website, which said, “mass deportations=more jobs.”

In fact, mass deportations, by definition means fewer jobs and a less productive economy. One can imagine how much better the jobs report would look if America were embracing immigration right now, instead of trying to kick out as many people as possible.

Scenes from D.C.: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in D.C. to meet with Trump, his seventh such visit in Trump’s second term. Hardest hit are District-area motorists trying to navigate the Secret Service’s road closures.

???? JUST IN: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Washington, DC for his meeting at the White House with President Trump

Netanyahu is in a large Secret Service motorcade, and security is INCREDIBLY tight, with I-695W being totally shut down, and two helicopters overhead.… pic.twitter.com/j5I4PGaj6e

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) February 10, 2026

QUICK LINKS

• The Federal Aviation Administration has resumed normal operations at the El Paso airport. Flights were briefly paused there, causing lots of raised eyebrows this morning.

The temporary closure of airspace over El Paso has been lifted. There is no threat to commercial aviation. All flights will resume as normal.

— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) February 11, 2026

• Jon Stewart talks with protectionist noneconomist Oren Cass about how economists are wrong about everything.

Jon noticed some anger from economists in the comments last week. He gets into that and so much more with the Chief Economist of American Compass @oren_cass on a new episode tomorrow. #theweeklyshow #jonstewart #politics pic.twitter.com/fRrWRkjdKJ

— The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart (@weeklyshowpod) February 10, 2026

• Fringe Republican candidate for Florida governor, James Fishback, alleges an arsonist attempted to burn down his house, leading him to post this video.

On Sunday, an arsonist tried to burn down my home where our staff was working.

If anyone attacks our staff or volunteers, we will not wait for the police.

We will shoot you dead.pic.twitter.com/7Bc0gWs3RN

— James Fishback (@j_fishback) February 10, 2026

BREAKING: TMZ’s Harvey Levin says within the last 15 minutes, they’ve seen activity in the bitcoin account that was mentioned in the original alleged ransom note for Nancy Guthrie that TMZ received.

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) February 11, 2026

• Nine people have been killed, and 25 wounded, in a mass shooting in rural western Canada.
• A grand jury refuses to indict Democratic lawmakers who had said in a video that U.S. troops should resist illegal orders. Trump had said the video, made in the context of the Venezuelan boat bombings, was “seditious.”