President Trump orders firing of Labor statistics chief after weak jobs report

Yahoo

4 days ago

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump said he ordered the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the U.S. commissioner of Labor Statistics, accusing her without evidence of manipulating data for "political purposes" after the Labor Department reported the U.S. added a disappointing 73,000 jobs in July.
Trump on Aug. 1 announced the unprecedented move in a post on his social media app Truth Social, writing that he was "just informed that our Country's 'Jobs Numbers' are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer."
"We need accurate Jobs Numbers," Trump said, vowing to choose "someone much more competent and qualified" to replace McEntarfer. "Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can't be manipulated for political purposes."
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The Senate in January 2024 confirmed McEntarfer, an appointment of former President Joe Biden. McEntarfer, a labor economist, has worked 20 years in the federal government, including previous stints at the U.S. Census Bureau and Treasury Department.
In addition to Friday's release of the July jobs report ‒ which came in well below the 105,000 new jobs that had been estimated ‒ the Labor Department's job gains for May and June were revised down by 258,000, portraying a much weaker labor market than believed in late spring and early summer.
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Trump, who has claimed the economy is booming under his leadership, said "today's Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad."
Trump also accused McEntarfer of "faking the jobs numbers before the (2024) election" to help Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Trump pointed to robust jobs reports in March, August and September of 2024 that were later revised lower.
Jobs data can't be manipulated, expert says
Former Labor department officials said manipulating the jobs data would be virtually impossible.
Heidi Shierholz, the Labor Department's chief economist from 2014 to early 2017 during President Barack Obama's administration, said the charge from Trump 'is outrageous and shows a total misunderstanding of how government statistical agencies work' to compile data, she said.
Hundreds of employees, she said, work on the jobs report and a 'huge number' see the final number before it's published.
'All of the people producing the numbers are career civil servants,' she added. 'They're not political. There's literally no way the commissioner could change the numbers without a huge number of people saying, 'That's not what we put out.''
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Keith Hall, who served as BLS commissioner from 2008 to 2011, said the jobs number 'is very intentionally something you couldn't play with ... because there are so many people involved.'
He estimated that eight to 10 BLS employees see the final figure and hundreds provide inputs to that tally. All of them would object if the data were distorted. 'Not a lot of people see the final number but all of the data, detail and all of the industry statistics need to add up,' said Hall, a Republican who was appointed by George W. Bush and continued to serve under Obama.
'It's essentially impossible for the numbers to be fudged," Hall said.
Trump falsely claims '24 jobs numbers were revised after election
Yet Trump, speaking to reporters on Aug. 1, doubled down on his unsubstantiated claims and falsely said the jobs numbers in 2024 were revised after the November election.
"They came out with numbers that were very favorable to Kamala. They were trying to get her elected," Trump said. "But then on the 15th of November, or thereabouts, they had an 800,000 or 900,000 reduction ‒ right after the election. But it didn't work."
In reality, the Labor Department in August 2024 ‒ three months before the election ‒ announced that it reduced the estimate of total employment in March 2024 by 818,000, the largest such downgrade in 15 years.
"We're doing so well. I believe the numbers were phony," Trump said of the July figures, "just like they were before the (2024) election. So you know what I did? I fired her."
Trump did not say who he plans to nominate to fill the position.
Following the initial release of the July jobs report, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer did not dispute the figures. But after Trump called the numbers into question, Chavez-DeRemer released a statement saying she agrees "wholeheartedly with the president that our jobs numbers must be fair, accurate, and never manipulated for political purposes."
'Trump needs to look in the mirror'
Hall said the BLS commissioner typically doesn't see the jobs data until the report has been drafted, shortly before it's released. The president's Council of Economic Advisers sees the report the night before it's released, he said.
'There's a strong culture at BLS to be transparent with all things,' said Hall, currently a distinguished visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. 'That's a big deal.'
He added, 'I trust BLS more than I trust the Trump administration. If the president wants to know what made the numbers weak, he needs to look in the mirror, not at BLS.'
Hall said that if the economy is losing steam, that trend likely will show up in other economic data besides the jobs report, providing a check on its accuracy.
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The Commerce Department's Inspector General found during one investigation of accusations of manipulation that falsifying the unemployment rate would have required a conspiracy among 78 field representatives in the Philadelphia office. They would have had to work together 'in a coordinated way, to report each and every unemployed person included in their sample" that month. Such a scheme 'would have been detected' by the Census Bureau's quality assurance procedures, the report said.
Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump orders firing of Labor statistics head after weak jobs report