Trump Fires Jobs Numbers Chief, Raising Fears That Employment Data Will Be Manipulated
President Donald Trump said Thursday he fired the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) hours after a jobs report showed weakening employment growth — a decline that many economists have attributed to his administration’s chaotic tariff policy.
“In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform after firing BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.
Trump said McEntarfer “will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.”
But her firing raises the threat of political interference in U.S. economic data, which economists warn would undermine confidence in the economy.
McEntarfer’s dismissal is part of Trump’s ongoing efforts to take control of traditionally independent federal agencies, and to use them for political gain.
William Beach, McEntarfer’s predecessor at BLS who was appointed by Trump in 2017, denounced her dismissal, saying it “escalates the President’s unprecedented attacks on the independence and integrity of the federal statistical system.”
“This rationale for firing Dr. McEntarfer is without merit and undermines the credibility of federal economic statistics that are a cornerstone of intelligent economic decision-making by businesses, families, and policymakers,” Beach said in a statement. “When leaders of other nations have politicized economic data, it has destroyed public trust in all official statistics and in government science.”
Without providing evidence, Trump accused McEntarfer of manipulating labor data to benefit Democrats in the 2024 election, by revising BLS figures ahead of the vote.
“This is the same Bureau of Labor Statistics that overstated the Jobs Growth in March 2024 by approximately 818,000 and, then again, right before the 2024 Presidential Election, in August and September, by 112,000,” Trump said.
In fact, BLS regularly revises figures in new reports as its officials get additional information about the economy.
In Friday’s jobs report, BLS revised its May and June numbers downward by more than 200,000 jobs combined.
McEntarfer, a longtime federal employee, was nominated as BLS commissioner by then-President Joe Biden in 2023 and was confirmed by the Senate in a bipartisan 86-to-8 vote.
Vice President J.D. Vance was among the senators who voted to confirm McEntarfer, who also served in the U.S. Census Bureau during Trump’s first term.
Michael Clemens, an economics professor at George Mason University, said Trump dismissing McEntarfer was “an attack on democracy itself.”
“No Democratic or Republican politician can be allowed to suppress the most basic facts that reveal real-world effects of policy,” Clemens said. “Facts are the only basis for accountability, and thus a firebreak against dictatorship.”
In his post announcing McEntarfer’s dismissal, Trump again attacked Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Trump and his political appointees have gone after Powell over his monetary decisions and concerns about tariff-induced inflation.
“Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should also be put ‘out to pasture,’” the president said.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to dismiss Powell, even after the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the Federal Reserve must operate independent of the president.
While the court’s conservative majority allowed Trump to fire members of other independent agencies, it said that members of Federal Reserve boards and committees could not be arbitrarily fired because the Fed “is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.”
During a press conference Wednesday, Powell stressed the importance of having reliable governmental data in economic decision making.
“The government data really is the gold standard in data and we need it to be good and be able to rely on it,” Powell said. “And we’re not going to be able to substitute for that.”
This story has been updated with additional details.