The latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is showing an increase in jobs going to Americans, as well as fewer jobs going to foreign-born workers and a reduction in the federal workforce. The BLS report, released Tuesday, was delayed due to the federal government’s shutdown earlier this year, but showed a rise in unemployment, to a rate of 4.6%, the highest since 2021, due largely to President Donald Trump’s mass reductions in the federal workforce. Over 160,000 federal employees either resigned or were laid off in October, while another 6,000 lost their jobs in November, contributing to the higher unemployment rate.

Private sector job growth, however, increased by nearly 70,000 jobs in November, in addition to October’s 52,000 new jobs, netting over 120,000 new jobs. Notably, all new job growth went to American-born workers, while foreign-born labor rates decreased. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) touted the gains for Americans in a social media post. “Under the Biden administration, most job growth came from government jobs and foreign labor,” the DOL observed. But with Trump “at the helm, every single job created has been in the PRIVATE SECTOR for NATIVE-BORN AMERICANS…”

Economist E.J. Antoni, who was initially tapped by Trump to head the BLS, described the report’s numbers as “the best Nov[ember] on record for jobs among native-born Americans,” noting that the number “of native-born Americans [with] jobs is up 2.6 million over the last 12 months while the number of foreign-born workers employed saw a slight decline; all of the net job growth this year has gone to Americans…”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, the chief architect of the president’s immigration agenda, commented on the report, “The jobs data you’ve seen most of your life has been a lie because it has simply been a measure of international migration. Far from measuring job creation, past jobs reports have measured the replacement of American workers.”

The sectors which saw the greatest increase in American employment included health care (46,000 new jobs), construction (28,000 new jobs), and social assistance (18,000 new jobs). As of 2024, nearly 20% of the U.S. workforce was foreign-born. Nearly a third of employees in construction were immigrants, as were nearly a quarter of employees in transportation and utilities and about 15% in health care. The industries employing the highest number of immigrants were health care and construction. Transportation saw a decrease last month of nearly 20,000 jobs, mostly in messengers and couriers.

Between 2020 and 2024, BLS reported that nearly 90% of job growth went to foreign-born workers, while the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) determined that about 60% of that job growth went exclusively to illegal immigrants. Economics analyst Paul Kiernan warned in 2024 that the “swelling” immigrant influx into the U.S. under then-President Joe Biden was “changing the makeup of the U.S. labor force in ways that are likely to reverberate through the economy for decades,” robbing American workers of jobs and depressing American workers’ wages. The Trump administration’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, economist Peter Navarro, confirmed early in Trump’s second term that illegal immigrants took most of the Biden administration’s job growth, while the majority of those who lost their jobs during those four years were American workers, a claim backed up by multiple studies, including those from CIS.

Since Trump’s return to the White House in January, his immigration policies have resulted in nearly two million illegal immigrants being removed from the U.S. — roughly three-quarters of whom chose to “self-deport.” The results for American workers have been tangible. Earlier this year, the White House reported that American blue-collar workers’ wages rose for the first time since Trump’s first term, recording a 1.7% increase for 2025, compared to a 1.3% increase for 2017. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and CIS resident fellow in law and policy Andrew R. Arthur both suggested that the exodus of mostly-illegal immigrants was largely responsible for the rise in American workers’ wages.

CIS research director Steven Camarota also told The Washington Stand that illegal immigrants tend to take jobs from Americans in blue-collar fields, such as construction (where Americans gained jobs last month) and transportation (where jobs decreased by nearly 20,000 last month). Camarota suggested, “There’s good reason to believe that stepped-up enforcement efforts really are making a difference.”