Trump celebrated 115,000 jobs while the year is the slowest since 2003

Trump posted on Truth Social this weekend wishing happy Mother's Day to the "115 THOUSAND AMERICANS who found jobs in April." All caps. Exclamation point. The full performance.

Here's what he didn't put in the post. April was a meaningful deceleration from March. The year overall has produced just 398,000 private sector jobs — the slowest pace since 2003. Federal government employment is falling. IT jobs are declining. The gains are concentrated in healthcare and transportation, the sectors that run no matter who's in the White House, because people still get sick and packages still move. Involuntary part-time work is up. Labor force participation is shrinking. The headline beat forecasts that were already low. Economists had projected somewhere between 62,000 and 67,000 jobs. Beating 65,000 is not a boom. It's a limbo bar set on the floor.

This is the playbook. Cherry-pick the one number that looks good, post it before anyone reads the methodology, and collect the coverage. The labor market is decelerating in real time and he's running a victory lap. Jerome Powell has every reason to hold rates because the picture is genuinely mixed. But Trump isn't holding a press conference about involuntary part-time work. He's writing in caps lock about Mother's Day.