Spicer claims that jobs numbers ‘may have been phony’ before, but now they’re ‘very real’

Touting the first jobs report of Donald Trump’s tenure, White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed without evidence Friday that the jobs figures “may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.”

Spicer, addressing reporters at the afternoon briefing, did not back up the assertion that previous federal jobs reports were “phony,” as Trump repeatedly said during the campaign without backing up the claim. But Spicer nonetheless confirmed that the president believes the figures are legitimate now that they signal economic growth under his administration.


“In the past, the president has referred to particular job reports as phony or totally fiction,” a reporter asked. “Does the president believe that this jobs report was accurate and a fair way to measure the economy?”

“I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly,” Spicer said. “They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.”

Trump and Spicer were quick on Friday to tout the new jobs numbers from the Labor Department, which found that employers added 235,000 jobs to the economy in February and put unemployment at 4.7 percent. The report beat analysts' expectations.

Trump, though, had repeatedly disparaged the federal government’s calculation of unemployment throughout his presidential campaign, making a series of claims that independent fact checkers debunked. He once mused incorrectly that unemployment was really 42 percent when the government pegged it at 5.1 percent.