Fox Business host grills labor secretary: 'It doesn't look good for the Trump economy'

Fox Business host Stuart Varney pressed Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer on a poor jobs report that "doesn't look good for the Trump economy."

Before Varney's interview with Chavez-DeRemer on Friday, Fox Business correspondent Connor Hansen noted that the economy lost 92,000 jobs in February instead of the expected gain of 59,000.

"Healthcare lost 28,000 jobs following a large spike in January," he observed. "Leisure and hospitality lost 27,000. Construction losing 11,000. The federal government with 10,000 less jobs and manufacturing down 12,000."

"Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer joins me now," Varney announced. "Madam Secretary, 92,000 jobs out in February. Fewer jobs in healthcare, fewer jobs for information services because of AI, the weather hurt things, government employment down."

"If you add it all up, it doesn't look good for the Trump economy," the host pointed out.

"Yeah, I couldn't agree with you," the secretary disagreed. "I think we have to address the fact that this is not a good report in its raw numbers, but we have to also talk about why this possibly has happened, this snapshot in time."

Chavez-DeRemer placed the blame on winter storms and a health care strike in California.

"But overall, we've gained 60,000 new jobs over the last two months," she insisted.

"And we did get revisions for December and January," Varney replied. "69,000 fewer jobs created than previously reported. So can we rely on your numbers?"

"Yeah, absolutely," Chavez-DeRemer remarked. "I think the president, that's exactly what he was questioning early in the year when he took office."

"We don't like to see these revisions," she added. "We want to make sure that we have integrity through BLS, we have integrity in the numbers."