White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer kicked off his Friday afternoon briefing praising the announcement that 235,000 jobs were created in February and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.7 per cent.
The job numbers reflect the first full month of Trump’s administration, and the White House was quick to brush off past statements the official unemployment data was fake and instead take credit for the “very real” numbers.
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“They may have been phoney in the past but it’s very real now,” Spicer said he was told by U.S. President Donald Trump.
But Trump has frequently questioned the validity of monthly data.
“Don’t believe these phoney numbers,” Trump said during the campaign, according to NPR.
“The number is probably 28, 29, as high as 35 [per cent]. In fact, I even heard recently 42 per cent.”
And at a rally in Sept. 2015, Trump called what was then a 5 per cent unemployment rate “such a phoney number.”
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“I’ve seen numbers of 24 per cent — I actually saw a number of 42 per cent unemployment. Forty-two per cent,” Politifact reported Trump said. “5.3 per cent unemployment — that is the biggest joke there is in this country. … The unemployment rate is probably 20 per cent, but I will tell you, you have some great economists that will tell you it’s a 30, 32. And the highest I’ve heard so far is 42 per cent.”
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According to the Labour Department, the United States added 235,000 jobs in February and the unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage points to 4.7 per cent. The department went on to say that more people were looking for jobs as well, a sign of growing confidence in the American economy. The numbers were similar in February 2016 when the economy added 242,000 jobs.
Spicer went on to say that Trump’s presidency is having a direct effect on the confidence in the U.S. economy.
“Absolutely,” Spicer said. “Look at the confidence indexes, they’re all going to the top. I think the stock market has created over $3 billion in wealth since he was elected.”
Meanwhile, the Canadian economy also beat expectations, adding 15,300 jobs.
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