Trump firing of statistics chief puts US data credibility at risk, experts warn

The Guardian

2 days ago

Donald Trump's firing of the head of the main agency for producing jobs figures risks propelling the US into the same category as countries notorious for 'cooking the books' such as Argentina and Greece, experts have warned.
Donald Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner last Friday, after accusing her agency of 'faking' the latest employment figures for 'political purposes,' which showed the US economy adding a lower-than-expected 73,000 jobs in July.
The BLS, the US government official source for labor statistics since 1884, also revised down the estimates of new positions created in May and June by a combined 258,000.
Trump provided no evidence for his accusations against McEntarfer, which he reinforced in social media posts on Monday, calling the bureau's latest reports 'rigged' and concocted.
But his decision jeopardizes the US's tradition of impartial and reliable statistic collection on which the country's economic stability and international reputation depends, specialists have told the Guardian.
Erica Groshen, McEnterfer's predecessor as BLS commissioner during Barack Obama's presidency, warned earlier this year that an impending civil-servant rule change that presaged last Friday's sacking could usher in a 'politicization' of government statistical bodies – whereby experts are pressured to produce massaged numbers that fitted an incumbent president's agenda.
She raised the specter of Greece and Argentina, where official statistics became discredited as a result of government-instigated misrepresenting of figures.
The International Monetary Fund stopped accepting the Argentinian government's inflation figures in 2013 after officials were found to have deliberately understated the rate for the previous six years.
After threatening Argentina – historically one of the IMF's biggest borrowers – with expulsion, the organization did not extend another loan to it until 2018.
In the case of Greece, government statisticians were accused of having made inflation and soaring budget deficits 'disappear' in the 1990s as the country sought respectable-looking numbers that would enable to qualify for the single European currency, the euro.
Greece subsequently joined the currency, but at an exorbitant long-term price. The 2008 global financial crash plunged its economy into a deep recession, and the government was forced to accept multi-billion dollar bailouts from the IMF and European Union – at the cost of painful cuts to social services.
Andreas Georgiou, who became head of Greece's main statistics agency during the crisis, even faced prosecution after he discovered that authorities had been dramatically understating budget deficits for years.
Both countries experienced severe political backlashes.
In Argentina, after two further IMF loans failed to stabiliize its economy, Javier Milei, a populist economist and ally of Trump, was elected in 2023 promising to take a chainsaw to the governing bureaucracy and many public services.
In Greece, a succession of left and rightwing governments have taken office amid a rise in support for radical and populist parties, giving rise to concerns for the health of the country's democracy.
Talking to the Guardian, Groshen warned of comparable scenarios following a rule change rolled by the White House's office of personnel management in April.
'Bureau of Labor Statistics leaders could be fired for releasing or planning to release jobs or inflation statistics unfavorable to the president's policy agenda,' she wrote in a briefing paper.
The revision altered the category of about 50,000 permanent civil servants to 'policy/career' status, making their removal easier.
Originally tabled in April to allow 30 days for comments, it gave agencies the right 'to expeditiously remove career employees in policy-influencing positions for poor performance or misconduct, such as corruption or for injecting partisanship into the performance of their official duties'.
The precise roles of officials affected were not defined, but Groshen pointed out that, if implemented, the president would determine who would be reclassified.
The change stemmed from an executive order Trump issued on his first day back in the White House on 20 January. It stated that the power of 'policy-influencing' civil servants is 'delegated by the president, and they must be accountable to the president'.
Groshen, now a specialist in government statistics at Cornell University, said the changes in civil servant status would make it easier for the government to tamper with numbers it disliked.
'There are a number of changes to the civil service that makes it much easier for the administration to interfere with the activities of statistical agencies and that worries me,' she said.
Under increased threat of removal, civil servants in federal statistics bodies 'might also face pressure to change methodologies or reveal pre-release information', she wrote.
'By making it easier to remove employees if a president determines that they are interfering with his or her policies, it increases the potential for passivity or political loyalty to be prioritized over expertise and experience.'