President Donald Trump told officials to fire Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hours after a report showed U.S. job growth cooled sharply over the last three months.
“I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said on social media Friday, accusing her, without evidence, of politicizing the jobs report. “She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”
Friday’s jobs report from the BLS showed payrolls increased 73,000 in July after the prior two months were revised down by nearly 260,000. In the past three months, employment growth has averaged a paltry 35,000 — the worst since the pandemic.
BLS didn’t immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
Former President Joe Biden nominated McEntarfer to head the statistical agency in 2023. She was confirmed in January of 2024, an election year, by a vote of 86-8, with then-Senator JD Vance voting “yea.”
William Wiatrowski, deputy BLS commissioner, will serve as acting BLS chief for now, said Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Her department oversees BLS.
While the commissioner role is appointed by the president, BLS describes its work as “independent” and “non-partisan.” Economists and statisticians say this impartiality is key to the public and market’s trust in the data, as trillions of dollars can trade on the numbers at any given time.
The U.S. is often touted as a standout in that regard, commonly referred to as the “gold standard” for economic statistics.
“If this holds, and I assume it will, it would be a very big deal. We would not be able to have great confidence in the integrity of the data going forward,” said Julia Coronado, founder of the research firm MacroPolicy Perspectives LLC. “This data is a public service of enormous value, and it’s integrity is essential.”
McEntarfer isn’t the only one who has come under Trump’s fire this week. The president has also ramped up pressure on Fed Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates. The central bank held borrowing costs steady for a fifth straight meeting when they convened Wednesday.
Separately, Fed Governor Adriana Kugler announced that she will step down from her position on the central bank’s board effective Aug. 8. That will present Trump with an immediate opportunity to select a nominee for her seat.
Recent Revisions
The downward revision to the prior two months was largely a result of seasonal adjustment for state and local government education, BLS said in earlier comments to Bloomberg. Those sectors substantially boosted June employment only to be largely revised away a month later.
But economists say the revisions also point to a more concerning, underlying issue of low response rates.
BLS surveys firms in the payrolls survey over the course of three months, gaining a more complete picture as more businesses respond. But a smaller share of firms are responding to the first poll.
Initial collection rates have repeatedly slid below 60% in recent months — down from the roughly 70% or more that was the norm before the pandemic.
In addition to the rolling revisions to payrolls that BLS does, there’s also a larger annual revision that comes out each February to benchmark the figures to a more accurate, but less timely data source.
BLS puts out a preliminary estimate of what that revision will be a few months in advance, and last year, that projection was the largest since 2009.
Trump alluded to those revisions in his post Friday, which also drew condemnation from key Republican senators at the time.
Trump’s directive to fire McEntarfer garnered swift criticism from Democrats. Senator Elizabeth Warren blasted the president for failing to help “people get good jobs” and instead terminating “the statistician who reported bad jobs data that the wanna-be king doesn’t like.”
And Ernie Tedeschi, who served as chief economist on Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, praised McEntarfer’s commitment to data and public service.
“I’ve worked closely with Erika. I know of no economist who is more data-focused & devoted to truth in statistics,” Tedeschi said in a post on X. “She never shied from speaking truth to power when the data were disappointing. Nothing would be worse for US credibility than political meddling in our economic data.”
(Wikimedia Commons)
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