WASHINGTON — Top White House officials have started trying to downplay a highly anticipated jobs report set for release Wednesday, insisting that the U.S. economy remains strong even if the data may ultimately show a fresh slowdown in hiring.
The source of the administration’s concern is the next monthly update from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which will offer a more official look at hiring in January as well as a revised glimpse at the state of U.S. employment over the past year.
Many analysts expect that federal report to show sluggishness in the labor market, echoing a series of unofficial, private-sector gauges in recent weeks, which have found “lackluster” hiring, an uptick in layoffs and little change in the number of new job postings.
For President Donald Trump, a dour jobs report could prove politically noxious, further complicating his work to convince a skeptical electorate that his agenda has yielded meaningful improvements for the economy. To that end, his top aides have fanned the airwaves in a bid to mount an early rebuttal, arguing that a low hiring number for January won’t tell the full story about the labor market at the start of the year.
“We have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like,” Peter Navarro, the president’s top trade adviser, said in an interview Tuesday on Fox Business.