Fact check: Vance touted a rebound in manufacturing jobs. The US is down 77,000 this term

By Daniel Dale, CNN

(CNN) — Vice President JD Vance made a false claim about manufacturing jobs in a speech on Monday. Then, he made a misleading claim on the same subject while speaking to reporters on Tuesday.

On Monday, Vance said last quarter had the biggest growth in manufacturing employment since Trump’s first presidency. In fact, last quarter’s gain of 18,000 manufacturing jobs was smaller than the gains in six of the Biden administration’s seven full quarters in 2021 and 2022.

On Tuesday, Vance claimed there had been “great rebounds under the Trump administration and under our leadership” in economic statistics including “manufacturing jobs.” He didn’t mention that, even with this 18,000 gain over the first three months of 2026, the economy has lost 77,000 manufacturing jobs since the beginning of the Trump-Vance administration – because the economy shed manufacturing jobs in every month of 2025 and again, according to preliminary data, in April 2026.

Vance’s office declined to comment for this article. Here is a fuller fact check of his assertions.

Multiple Biden-era quarters had bigger manufacturing job growth than the past quarter did

In a Monday speech in Missouri, Vance asked a series of rhetorical questions intended to prove his point that that the Trump-Vance administration “decided to put American businesses and most importantly, American workers first for a change.” One of Vance’s questions was this: “How is it that we’ve seen the biggest growth in manufacturing employment last quarter that we have seen in this country since Donald J. Trump was president the first time?”

The answer is … we haven’t seen that.

In reality, the increase in manufacturing jobs last quarter wasn’t even close to as big as the gains in various quarters of 2021 and 2022 under then-President Joe Biden, whose economic record Vance and Trump have long criticized.

Here are the numbers.

In the first quarter of 2026, the US economy added 18,000 manufacturing jobs: 2,000 in January, 1,000 in February and 15,000 in March, federal figures show. Vance could have correctly said that this was the first quarter without a decline in manufacturing jobs since the last quarter of 2023 under Biden, when the number was flat.

But let’s look at the manufacturing job gains in 2022 (when all four quarters were during the Biden administration) and 2021 (when the last three quarters were under Biden and the first quarter was partly under Trump).

Q1 2022: 137,000 jobs added.

Q2 2022: 93,000 jobs added.

Q3 2022: 82,000 jobs added.

Q4 2022: 46,000 jobs added.

Q1 2021 (Trump was president for most of January, Biden for the rest of the quarter): 76,000 jobs added.

Q2 2021: 18,000 jobs added.

Q3 2021: 146,000 jobs added.

Q4 2021: 144,000 jobs added.

None of the eight quarters in those two years had bigger job growth than the 18,000 gain of the first quarter of 2026. So Vance’s claim that the most recent quarter had the biggest growth in manufacturing employment since Trump’s first presidency is clearly untrue.

Trump and his allies have often argued that job gains early in the Biden presidency were artificially large because many positions were simply revived after they were briefly lost to the massive pandemic-related layoffs of early 2020; Biden and his allies have often argued that his policies were responsible for a faster and stronger jobs recovery than the US would have had otherwise. It’s not for us to adjudicate that debate here – though it’s worth noting that the gains in the third quarter and fourth quarter of 2022 (82,000 jobs and 46,000 jobs respectively) came after the economy had already returned to its pre-pandemic total in the second quarter of that year.

The economy has lost manufacturing jobs so far this Trump term

Vance spoke to the press in the White House briefing room on Tuesday. A reporter asked what he would say to Americans voting in Tuesday’s elections who felt the president and vice president hadn’t kept some key campaign promises, including pledges to cut gas prices and inflation.

Part of Vance’s answer was this: “We ran on the promise of bringing investment back into the United States of America, that rather than factory closures we were going to have factories opening, and we’ve seen both construction jobs in manufacturing but also manufacturing jobs have great rebounds under the Trump administration and under our leadership.”

Vance is right that there has been an increase during this administration in the number of construction jobs focused on building manufacturing facilities. But his next claim, that there has been a great rebound in manufacturing jobs under this administration, is misleading at best.

This administration has actually presided over a net loss of manufacturing jobs. The economy lost 77,000 manufacturing jobs from February 2025, the administration’s first full month in office, through April 2026, the last month for which federal data is available. There was a decline in manufacturing jobs every single month of 2025 (after a decline in 10 of the 12 months of 2024 under Biden).

It is true, again, that the economy added 18,000 manufacturing jobs in the first three months of 2026 – before losing 2,000 in April 2026, according to preliminary figures. But that 18,000 gain under Trump and Vance early this year did not come close to overcoming the bigger losses under their administration last year.

That’s not to say all the losses are the administration’s fault, though its volatile tariff policies might well have contributed to the decline; US manufacturing employment peaked in the late 1970s and had been heading downward again since Biden-era 2023. And there were positive signs in various manufacturing data in the first four months of 2026 – including that economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in all four months, according to one key metric.

Vance could fairly cite those numbers, as the White House does on its website. He could, like the administration’s acting labor secretary did earlier this month, mount an argument that “the jobs are coming” in the wake of recent corporate investments in factories. He could even fairly describe the 18,000 first-quarter jobs gain as a rebound.

But it’s deceptive to credit their leadership for this bounceback without acknowledging that it’s merely a partial bounceback from losses that occurred under their leadership.

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