Fox host gets on-air slap down as expert stops her gushing over Trump's new job numbers

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its jobs report for the month of April on Friday, and Fox News’ Cheryl Casone quickly hailed the figures as “better than expected” – only to be immediately undercut by an economist who pointed to weaker underlying data beneath the headline numbers.

“We got a much better than expected jobs report for the month of April: 115,000 jobs is the non-farm number – 115,000 jobs!” Casone said.

“Expectation was 62,000 – again, a strong print for the U.S. jobs picture! The unemployment rate, as expected, holding steady, 4.3%. Manufacturing jobs, we actually saw a loss of 2,000, the expectation was for a gain of 5,000, and on the private side, we saw 123,000 private sector jobs added – the expectation was 75,000.”

Casone asked economist E.J. Antoni – whom Trump had nominated to be BLS commissioner last year but ultimately withdrew the nomination amid scrutiny – for his reaction to the report, to which he gave a far less optimistic assessment.

“Well, definitely good headline numbers, Cheryl, but as I'm just looking through the next part of the headline, it looks like the employment level is actually down about 226,000 I think,” Antoni said. “So the employment level is down – in other words, the number of people actually working. Looks like fewer people are participating in the labor market for the month. So this might be another one of those reports where it's difficult to interpret the conflicting signals.”