Fox’s increasingly desperate efforts to spin the disastrous economic impacts of President Donald Trump’s policies were on full display as the network discussed the latest monthly jobs report.

The February jobs report released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a loss of 92,000 jobs in February, as well as significant downward revisions of 4,000 jobs for January and 65,000 jobs for December 2025 — bringing December’s total down to a net loss of 17,000 jobs.

As University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers pointed out, this means that the U.S. economy has fewer jobs today than it did in April 2025, when President Donald Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs, which the Supreme Court recently ruled were illegal taxes. In total, the U.S. has 19,000 fewer jobs today than it did last April.

Economic Policy Institute senior economist Elise Gould noted that manufacturing employment has declined by 100,000 jobs since Trump took office, despite his repeated campaign promises to revitalize the American manufacturing sector, with those job losses accelerating since Trump promised last April that “jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country.” Economic writer Joey Politano, meanwhile, displayed a graph showing 238,000 blue-collar job losses over the past year—employment sectors that Trump’s policies were purportedly intended to buoy.

EPI President Heidi Shierholz summed it up as: “A SNAPSHOT OF TRUMP'S ECONOMY—judged by his own goals: manufacturing jobs are down 100,000 since Trump took office, private-sector job growth is the weakest we’ve seen outside a recession in more than 20 years, and the unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers has increased.” Shierholz’s last point refers to an obsession among the MAGA right about native-born employment that they consistently mislead about.

Yet according to Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo, things have been great since April.

During her coverage of today’s jobs report, Bartiromo said: “If you bought stocks on April 2 of last year, on so-called ‘Liberation Day’ about the tariffs, you are up huge. When you look at some of those tech names, you have made a lot of money.”

Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone then deflected from the disastrous February jobs report (-92,000 jobs) as well as the huge negative revision for December (revised down to -17,000 jobs) by hyping the so-called “blockbuster” January jobs report, which was itself also revised down slightly to a still-preliminary +126,000 jobs. Casone then attempted to pivot to a different jobs report released earlier this week by the private payroll firm ADP, which she claimed shows “private sector hiring is still strong.” That report beat weak expectations, but still showed private job growth of only 63,000 in February and contained negative revisions for January.

Ever since Trump announced his sweeping tariffs last April — even though they were illegal and have since been replaced by new global tariffs that are, unsurprisingly, also being challenged as illegal — Fox has been at the forefront in cheering on these higher taxes on American families.

Fox hosts have defended the chaos the tariffs initially unleashed in the stock market, and even as manufacturing employment has declined, Fox has continued to pretend that Trump’s tariffs are essential to restoring that sector.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters