The Experts Made a Jobs Prediction in May and Trump Just Made Them Look Like Fools
Biden spent four years handing the expert class every excuse they needed to be wrong about Trump.
New jobs numbers dropped this morning – and the economists who spent months predicting a Trump recession just got a very public lesson in being wrong.
What happened next is the number every Democrat in Washington is desperately hoping you don't see.
May 2026 Jobs Report: 172,000 Jobs and Another Miss for the Experts
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that the U.S. economy added 172,000 jobs in May – more than double what the experts predicted.
Economists polled before the report expected 85,000 jobs.
Trump delivered 172,000.
That's not a small miss. That's the entire analyst class getting caught flatfooted for the third consecutive month.
March was revised up to 214,000 jobs. April was revised up to 179,000. The three-month average now sits above 188,000 – and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.3 percent.
Meanwhile, jobless claims released Thursday came in at 225,000 seasonally adjusted – a number that sounds alarming until you understand what it actually means.
Jobless Claims Hit a 50-Year Low and the Media Buried It Behind a Seasonal Adjustment
The media spent Thursday breathlessly reporting that jobless claims "surged" to their highest level in four months.
The entire increase was manufactured by a seasonal adjustment – a statistical formula that expected claims to fall sharply after Memorial Day. When they didn't fall as fast as the formula predicted, the adjustment made the number look worse than it was.
Unadjusted – meaning the actual, real-world count of Americans filing for unemployment – claims fell by 121, landing at 187,978.
That number has only been this low or lower in 4.3 percent of all weeks going back to 1967.
The last time Memorial Day jobless claims were this low was 1973 and 2022. The only other comparable summer starts came during Trump's first term, in 2018 and 2019 – when this same expert class insisted the numbers couldn't last.
They lasted. And here we are again.
The Trump Economy Has a 4.3 Percent Unemployment Rate and Democrats Have No Answer
The pattern isn't complicated.
Economists keep underestimating the Trump economy. When April's numbers came in, the White House reported that 94 percent of Bloomberg economists – 65 out of 69 – completely missed the mark. May wasn't even close.
That's not a coincidence. That's a worldview failing in real time.
The media's seasonal-adjustment story is a perfect window into how this works. Take a number that's historically excellent. Add a statistical modifier. Report the modifier as the news. Ignore the underlying reality. Repeat until the midterms.
American workers are not losing their jobs at rates anywhere near what the doom-casters predicted when Trump took office. Layoffs are near 50-year lows. Job creation is beating forecasts month after month. The experts who built careers predicting a Trump recession are watching their credibility disappear one jobs report at a time.
Democrats spent the first months of 2026 screaming about tariffs destroying the economy. Sen. Jeff Merkley declared in March that "the Trump recession is on its way." Sen. Brian Schatz accused Trump of "ruining the economy on purpose."
Merkley and Schatz don't have a recession to point to. They have 172,000 jobs – and nothing left to say.
Sources
- John Carney, "Despite Rise, Jobless Claims Have Almost Never Been So Low As Summer Started," Breitbart, June 4, 2026.
- John Carney, "Trump Boom: America Created 172,000 Jobs In May, Nearly Twice As Many as Expected," Breitbart, June 5, 2026.
- "May 2026 Jobs Report: US Employers Add 172,000 Jobs, Beating Expectations," Fox Business, June 5, 2026.
- "JOBS REPORT: Trump Economy Roars Ahead with Big Private Sector Job Gains," The White House, May 2026.
- Anders Hagstrom, "Trump Naysayers Who Predicted Economic Doom Again Proven Wrong After Latest Jobs Report," Fox News, July 3, 2025.
