Trump fires of labour stats chief after weak July jobs report release
Trump announced the firing of McEntarfer over his Truth Social account
Trump lambasted McEntarfer and accused her of producing fake job numbers. "We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified," Trump said.There is no proof that supports Trump's accusations about the BLS tampering with data. The BLS is the statistical agency responsible for creating the employment report, which is closely followed, as well as data on consumer and producer prices.The White House did not respond immediately to questions about Trump's post.ACCUSATIONSAccording to Reuters, Trump acccused McEntarfer of putting out the job numbers before the elections to help Democrats.The order to dismiss McEntarfer comes at a time when the Trump administration's mass layoffs of federal government workers have raised concerns about the quality of US economic data, long seen as the gold standard.Trump later posted: 'In my opinion, today's Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.'After his initial post, Labour Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said on X that McEntarfer was no longer leading the bureau and that William Wiatrowski, the deputy commissioner, would serve as the acting director.'I support the President's decision to replace Biden's Commissioner and ensure the American People can trust the important and influential data coming from BLS,' Chavez-DeRemer said.Earlier this year, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick disbanded two expert committees that worked with the government to produce economic statistics. Lutnick has also floated the idea of stripping out government spending from the gross domestic product report, claiming "governments historically have messed with GDP."CONCERNS OVER DATA INTEGRITYThe recent dismissal of a senior Bureau of Labour Statistics official has triggered a wave of concern among economists, public sector unions, and data transparency advocates, as Trump-aligned Republicans label the official a 'Biden holdover.'advertisementAmerican Federation of Government Employees national president Everett Kelley defended the integrity of the agency and its personnel. "The civil servants at BLS are not political actors. They are professionals committed to producing accurate, independent data, regardless of who is in power," said Kelley, noting that the ousted official, McEntarfer, had served across multiple administrations over more than two decades.While the Trump administration has not detailed the rationale behind the firing, allies have publicly supported the move, casting it as part of an effort to purge lingering Biden-era personnel.The incident has prompted broader warnings about the politicisation of economic statistics. "Politicizing economic statistics is a self-defeating act," said Michael Madowitz, principal economist at the Roosevelt Institute's Roosevelt Forward. "Credibility is far easier to lose than rebuild, and the credibility of America's economic data is the foundation on which we've built the strongest economy in the world. Blinding the public about the state of the economy has a long track record, and it never ends well."Earlier this year, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick disbanded two advisory committees tasked with helping ensure the reliability of US economic statistics. He has also floated controversial changes to the calculation of GDP, suggesting that government spending should be excluded on the grounds that 'governments historically have messed with GDP.'advertisementMeanwhile, the BLS has scaled back data collection efforts for key reports, citing budget limitations. Sample sizes have been reduced for both consumer and producer price indexes. The monthly employment survey—which typically includes data from around 121,000 businesses and agencies covering more than 600,000 worksites—has seen its response rate fall from 80.3% in October 2020 to just 67.1% in July.With multiple shifts in data practices underway and political tensions escalating, experts warn that the perceived impartiality of US economic data could be at risk.ECONOMISTS' OVERVIEW The BLS has already reduced data collection for the consumer price data as well as the producer price report.Economists attributed the sharply slower job growth to Trump's trade and immigration policies. The economy created only 73,000 jobs in July. Data for May and June were revised sharply down to show 258,000 fewer jobs created than had been previously reported. As per a report by CNBC, Laura Ulrich, director of economic research for North America at job site Indeed said that the July figure suggests the job market isn't keeping pace with population growth, and is therefore contracting.- EndsWith inputs from agencies.
advertisement
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hans India
a few seconds ago
- Hans India
Owaisi says fresh US tariffs on India will hurt Indian exporters, deter FDI, hit jobs hard
Hyderabad: AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Thursday said US President Donald Trump's decision to impose 50 per cent tariff on Indian goods will hurt Indian exporters, MSMEs, manufacturers and will disrupt supply chains, deter FDI, and hit jobs hard. A day after Trump imposed a penalty of another 25 per cent on India for buying Russian oil, Owaisi said Trump just slapped another 25 per cent tariff on India, taking it to 50 per cent, because 'we bought oil from Russia'. In a post on X, the Hyderabad MP said 'This isn't diplomacy, it's bullying by the buffoon-in-chief who clearly doesn't understand how global trade works". These tariffs will hurt Indian exporters, MSMEs, and manufacturers. It'll disrupt supply chains, deter FDI, and hit jobs hard. But why will Narendra Modi care? Where are those BJP muscle-flexers now?" the AIMIM chief asked. "Last time I'd asked if Modi ji would show his 56-inch chest when Trump imposed 56% tariffs. Trump stopped at 50%. Maybe he's scared of our non-biological PM? Was selling out our strategic autonomy worth filling your friends' billionaire coffers?" he further said. Trump on Wednesday slapped an additional 25 per cent tariff on goods coming from India as penalty for New Delhi's continued purchase of Russian oil, a move that is likely to hit sectors such as textiles, marine and leather exports hard. Trump signed an executive order - Addressing Threats to the US by the Government of the Russian Federation - imposing the additional tariff over and above the 25 per cent levy, which comes into effect from August 7. After this order, the total tariff on Indian goods, barring a small exemption list, will be 50 per cent.
Hindustan Times
a few seconds ago
- Hindustan Times
More Ukrainians now want negotiated end to war with Russia, shows new survey
After more than three years of war, Ukrainians are increasingly eager for a settlement that ends the fight against Russia's invasion, according to a new Gallup poll published Thursday — although only about a quarter of Ukrainians surveyed expect the guns to fall silent within the next 12 months. Russia's relentless pounding of urban areas behind the front line has killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations. (REUTERS) The enthusiasm for a negotiated deal is a sharp reversal from 2022 — the year the war began — when Gallup found that about three-quarters of Ukrainians wanted to keep fighting until victory. Now only about one-quarter hold that view, with support for continuing the war declining steadily across all regions and demographic groups. The findings were based on samples of 1,000 or more respondents ages 15 and older living in Ukraine. Some territories under entrenched Russian control, representing about 10% of the population, were excluded from surveys conducted after 2022 due to lack of access. Since the start of the full-scale war, Russia's relentless pounding of urban areas behind the front line has killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations. On the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line snaking from northeast to southeast Ukraine, where tens of thousands of troops on both sides have died, Russia's bigger army is slowly capturing more land. Also Read: Donald Trump plans to meet Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky next week in a renewed bid to end Ukraine war The poll came out on the eve of US President Donald Trump's Friday deadline for Russia to stop the killing or face heavy economic sanctions. In the new Gallup survey, conducted in early July, about 7 in 10 Ukrainians say their country should seek to negotiate a settlement as soon as possible. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last month renewed his offer to meet with Russia's Vladimir Putin, but his overture was rebuffed as Russia sticks to its demands, and the sides remain far apart. Most Ukrainians do not expect a lasting peace anytime soon, the poll found. Only about one-quarter say it's 'very' or 'somewhat' likely that active fighting will end within the next 12 months, while about 7 in 10 think it's 'somewhat' or 'very' unlikely that active fighting will be over in the next year. Approval of US falls, approval of Germany rises Ukrainian views of the American government have cratered over the past few years, while positive views of Germany's leadership have risen, according to Gallup. Three years ago, about two-thirds of Ukrainians approved of US leadership. That's since fallen to 16% in the latest poll, reflecting new tensions between the two countries since Trump took office in January. But although the dip from last year was substantial — approval of US leadership was 40% in 2024 — positive views of US leadership were already dropping before Trump took office, perhaps related to the antipathy that prominent Republican politicians showed toward billions of dollars in US support for Ukraine. Germany has grown more popular among Ukrainians over the past few years, rising to 63% approval in the new poll. Hope for NATO, EU acceptance has fallen Ukrainians are much less optimistic that their country will be accepted into NATO or the European Union in the next decade than they were just a few years ago. In the new poll, about one-third of Ukrainians expect that Ukraine will be accepted into NATO within the next 10 years, while about one-quarter think it will take at least 10 years, and one-third believe it will never happen. That's down from 2022, when about two-thirds of Ukrainians thought acceptance into NATO would happen in the coming decade and only about 1 in 10 thought it would never happen. Hope for acceptance into the EU is higher but has also fallen. About half, 52%, of Ukrainians now expect to be part of the EU within the next decade, down from 73% in 2022.
The Hindu
a few seconds ago
- The Hindu
Trump plans 100% tariff on chips made outside U.S.; OpenAI's GPT-5 nears release; Apple to invest $100 billion in U.S. manufacturing
Trump plans 100% tariff on chips made outside U.S. U.S. President Donald Trump said that he will be imposing 100% tariff on computer chips unless they're manufactured within the U.S. The threat has raised the fears around higher prices of electronics, automobiles, household appliances and other essential electronic items. Trump's warning comes three months after he had said electronics would mostly be exempt from the heavy tariffs imposed by his administration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a shortage of chips pushed up the price of autos causing increased inflation. Investors have said that the tariff exemptions were a plus for Apple and other major tech companies which have invested massive amounts of money in chip manufacturing outside the U.S. Apple has committed to investing $600 billion in the U.S. with another $100 billion promised in February. Big Tech in total has said they will be investing $1.5 trillion in the U.S. since Trump has come to power. There is a chance that Trump could exempt Apple from the tariffs owing to this. Demand for chips has grown with sales increasing by 19.6% in June, according to data. Trump has been fostering domestic manufacturing often saying that the high costs of chips outside the country could be avoided by opening factories domestically. OpenAI's GPT-5 nears release OpenAI is preparing for the release of their latest flagship AI model, GPT-5, so users can finally see the increments in performance from GPT-4. A couple of people who have tested the model said that the coding capabilities of the model shone as did its ability to solve science and math problems. However, the advances from GPT-4 to GPT-5 were not as huge as the advances from GPT-3 to GPT-4. The recent advancement in AI models was based on scaling up by increasing training data and compute. But OpenAI has struggled with scaling up like issues with running into a data wall. Ilya Sutskever, the former chief scientist at OpenAI had said in a speech earlier that even though power could be expanded, data was becoming limited. Besides this, another problem was that the 'training runs' for large language models are more likely to have failures from hardware malfunctioning so researchers can't determine the final performance of the models until the end which can last for months. OpenAI released ChatGPT around three years ago introducing AI to the mainstream globally. The release led to rivals like Google and Anthropic releasing competitive AI models. OpenAI is also working on solving test-time compute which involves reasoning AI models. But CEO Sam Altman said that GPT-5 will be a mix of both reasoning and their flagship large language models. Apple to invest $100 billion in U.S. manufacturing Apple CEO Tim Cook met Donald Trump yesterday to announce an additional investment of $100 billion across the next four years. Under the announcement, Apple will bring more of their supply chain and advanced manufacturing processes to the U.S. as a part of the American Manufacturing Programme initiative but it still isn't a full commitment to make the iPhone domestically completely. Cook said that this plan will expand work with 10 companies across the U.S. that make parts and semiconductor chips. These partners include Corning, Coherent, Applied Materials, Texas Instruments and Broadcom along with a few others. Apple had earlier this year said that it will invest $500 billion domestically. Trump has been upset with Apple shifting their manufacturing processes to India from China after he placed tariffs. Just recently now, Trump is targetting India due to their purchase of Russian oil and imposed additional tariffs on India. Cook has previously said that a bunch of iPhone components can be made in India like the glass display and module to identify faces.
