For Americans concerned about the U.S. job market, it’s become increasingly difficult to be optimistic. Indeed, in the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, job growth has slowed to levels unseen since the Great Recession.

Then this week the Labor Department released new data that made matters just a bit worse. The New York Times reported:

The U.S. economy probably added close to a million fewer jobs in 2024 and early 2025 than previously reported, the latest sign that the labor market, until recently a bright spot in the economy, may be weaker than it initially appeared. The revised data was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as part of a longstanding annual process known as benchmarking.

In recent years, benchmarking has generated some unfortunate conspiracy theories — mainly from Trump and other Republican leaders who’ve never familiarized themselves with the basics of how economic reports work — though Bloomberg’s Jonathan Levin explained well in his latest column why those claims are wrong.

Nevertheless, the data reinforced what has been obvious for a while: The American job market isn’t in great shape.

So a reporter asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt a reasonable question: When should the public expect the job numbers to improve?

“Well, first, we need accurate numbers,” Leavitt replied. “We need truthful and honest data, which is why the president took the monumental step to try and appoint and confirm new leadership at the BLS so we can have data that we can actually rely on. And that’s what the president is doing, and we hope that his nominee will soon be confirmed.”

First, we already have honest economic data. Republicans might not like economic statistics, but that doesn’t make them dishonest.

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Second, Trump’s decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he was frustrated by the failures of his own economic agenda was many things, but “monumental” isn’t the first adjective that comes to mind.

Third, the idea that E.J. Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, can be counted on to oversee the production of reliable employment data is absurd given everything we’ve learned about Antoni and his unfortunate record.

But even if we put all of these relevant details aside, it’s worth appreciating Leavitt’s lazy rhetorical trick. To hear the White House press secretary tell it, the American job market might look discouraging, but that’s only because the Trump administration is not currently generating “accurate numbers.”

In other words, as Trump fails, the public should necessarily discount his economic performance because, according to the White House, discouraging data is inherently suspect.

That creates a convenient escape for the president and his team for the foreseeable future: The more Trump struggles to deliver, the more Americans are supposed to assume the evidence is untrustworthy. It’s a fundamentally unserious approach to governing, but it’s certainly easier than admitting that Trump’s bad ideas aren’t working.