After “disappointing” jobs report, Fox Business guest excitedly predicts future government job losses

Stephen Moore: “I guarantee you that number is going to be down next month, because we’re already seeing the Trump administration really shred jobs in the government sector.”

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published

After the jobs report for January 2025, the last jobs report of Joe Biden’s presidency, came in slightly below expectations, Heritage Foundation economist and Fox Business regular Stephen Moore singled out gains in government employment and promised that future reports would show losses for government jobs due to the Trump administration’s war against the federal workforce.

But what Moore failed to mention is that the federal workforce is only a small part of the government jobs sector. PolitiFact explained in 2011 that local government makes up about 2/3 of the government workforce, and state jobs about another quarter. That leaves the federal workforce as the smallest slice of the government jobs sector. (The breakdown last year was still roughly the same.)

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has also previously noted that “more than half of these state and local workers are in education, with much of the remaining employment in public safety (police and firefighting.) So the typical government employee isn’t a bureaucrat doing nothing; he or (often) she is a schoolteacher.”

From the February 7, 2025, edition of Fox Business' Mornings with Maria Bartiromo

LAUREN SIMONETTI (FOX BUSINESS REPORTER): Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 143,000 in January. So, that is shy of the estimate of 170,000. The unemployment rate edged lower, to 4.0%. Expectation was for it to remain flat at 4.1%. Job gains occurred in health care, in retail trade, and in social assistance. Employment declined in mining and the oil and gas extraction industries. So, disappointing on the top line number, you can — well, futures are now down further on this report; they had popped momentarily. Give me a second, guys, and I’ll get you where the jobs are, but that’s your headline number, is a disappointment.

CHERYL CASONE (FOX BUSINESS ANCHOR): Go ahead and keep digging in. I am seeing government jobs, guys, at 32,000. Of course, we never get an estimate for that, but Steve Moore, as you pointed, this is the last report under Bidenomics.

STEPHEN MOORE (HERITAGE FOUNDATION): Yeah. So, Cheryl was that plus 32,000 for government?

CASONE: Yeah, plus. No, it was plus. It was plus. All those new hires in the government.

[CROSSTALK]

MOORE: So here we go again. I'm going to make a guarantee to you. I guarantee you that number is going to be down next month, because we’re already seeing the Trump administration really shred jobs in the government sector. This is a disappointing report. It's probably one of the weakest reports we've seen in a long time.