STRUGGLE SESSION: CNN Undercuts CNN on Explosive January Jobs Numbers

Joseph Vazquez
February 12th, 2026 11:37 AM

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The different divisions of the God-forsaken excuse for a news network known as CNN were fumbling over themselves to get their narratives aligned over news that jobs growth exploded in January.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported February 11 that nonfarm payroll growth spiked 130,000, largely dwarfing Dow Jones consensus expectations of a 55,000 increase. In addition, the unemployment rate also beat expectations by ticking down to 4.3 percent.

But TDS-afflicted CNN Business writer Alicia Wallace tried to throw a bucket of cold water on the development in her breaking news story: “Still, economists had cautioned that January’s employment gains would likely be lifted by seasonal and weather-related factors and that longstanding concerns – including lack of broad-based job gains, weak demand and broad uncertainty – continue to weigh heavily on the jobs market.”

But here’s the funny part: CNN Global Economic Analyst Rana Foroohar joined the February 11 edition of CNN News Central to also dissect the news on jobs growth just before Wallace updated her piece at 10:20 am to reflect the data. Foroohar didn’t beat around the bush: “This is a hot jobs report, there’s really nothing in this not to like.” Apparently Wallace didn’t get the memo. Foroohar continued, “You’re seeing a lot of sectors that had been softer like manufacturing, for example, looking better. You're seeing numbers that really nobody expected." Oof! It’s like we’re in two different worlds or something.

Wallace, of course, tried to take her angle a step further with an uncontextualized spitting of cherry-picked factoids to bring down the temperature of the “hot” jobs report: “It’s the strongest month of employment gains since December 2024, potentially fueling optimism the US labor market has turned a corner after a year of weak job gains that a BLS annual revision on Wednesday showed were even worse than first reported.”

But as Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni pointed out, this misses the point: “Trump was handed an economy that was losing private sector jobs and adding gov't payrolls, but he successfully flipped the script, and one year later it's all private sector growth while cutting gov't jobs.”

Fellow economist Daniel Lacalle concurred with Antoni, calling the “2021-2024 period” under the Biden administration a "private sector recession.” Specifically, wrote Lacalle, “The public sector does not ‘create jobs’, it finances employment with debt, and should never be published alongside private sector jobs, as it misleads. The public sector must have the essential jobs, not used to bloat employment data.”

Wallace didn’t mention any of this context, which isn’t surprising given her history of smearing lipstick on the pig of Bidenomics. When inflation came in at a whopping 6 percent in February 2023 under President Joe Biden, which was just a few ticks down from the January 2023 6.4 percent number, Wallace tried to spin that report positively: “Inflation fell for the eighth-straight month in February.”

But how about when core inflation came in less than expected at 2.6 percent and in-line with expectations for the all items index at 2.7 percent year-over-year for December 2025 under Trump? Here was Wallace’s January 13 headline: “Inflation remained at 2.7% in December, as high prices continue to weigh on many Americans.”

Get it together, CNN. 

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