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US President Donald Trump has fired Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), accusing her of manipulating jobs reports for “political purposes.”
The dismissal follows the release of a jobs report on Friday that showed the U.S. economy added only 73,000 jobs in July, a figure well below expectations.
The report also included significant downward revisions for May and June, totalling 258,000 jobs.
On his Truth Social account, Trump claimed the job numbers were “RIGGED” to make Republicans and himself “look bad.”
He incorrectly referred to the normal process of data revision as a “major mistake.”
The BLS routinely revises its initial jobs estimates as it gathers more complete data, a practice that can be influenced by seasonal variations.
Trump told reporters that he “faked” the jobs numbers to help former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
“I fired her, and you know what? I did the right thing,” he said.
McEntarfer was confirmed by the Senate in January 2024 for a four-year term.
Deputy Commissioner William Wiatrowski will now serve as Acting Commissioner.
This is not the first time Trump has criticised the BLS. During his 2016 campaign, he questioned the official unemployment rate, and in 2024, he accused the Biden administration of a cover-up after the BLS reported an overcount of 818,000 jobs. However, his administration has also previously praised BLS data when it was favourable.
Economists and former government officials have voiced alarm over the firing.
Jason Furman, a former Obama economic adviser, called it “outrageous” to question the integrity of the BLS, stating that accurate statistics are “essential to the economy.”
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, described the BLS’s data as being of the “highest standard” and called any attempt to undermine that standard “deeply worrisome.”
While Labour Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer supported the president’s decision on social media, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia likened it to “Firing the ump doesn’t change the score.”
The BLS’s ability to maintain its data quality has also been a concern for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who noted in June that cost-cutting measures by the Trump administration were leading to a “mild degradation of the scope of the surveys.”
The BLS recently stopped collecting data for its Consumer Price Index in several cities and increased the use of statistical estimations, a trend that Powell said was “worrisome.”
