Trump Fires BLS Commissioner, Claiming Weak Jobs Numbers Were ‘Rigged’

Economists said ousting the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics could undermine confidence in government economic data.

President Trump unleashed his fury about weakness in the labor market on Friday, saying without evidence that the data were “rigged” and that he was firing the Senate-confirmed Department of Labor official responsible for pulling together the numbers each month.

In a long post on social media, Mr. Trump said he had directed his team to fire Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who was confirmed on a bipartisan basis in 2024.

Emily Liddel, an associate commissioner for the bureau, confirmed late Friday that Dr. McEntarfer had been fired and that William Wiatrowski, the deputy commissioner, would serve as acting commissioner.

The president fired Dr. McEntarfer after the bureau released monthly jobs data showing surprisingly weak hiring in July and large downward revisions to job growth in the previous two months. Economists widely interpreted the report as evidence that Mr. Trump’s policies were beginning to take a toll on the economy, though the president insisted in a subsequent post that the country was “doing GREAT!”

Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the labor secretary, echoed Mr. Trump’s concerns about Dr. McEntarfer in a post on social media.

“So you know what I did?” Mr. Trump later told reporters, as he claimed the numbers were “phony.” “I fired her, and you know what? I did the right thing.”

Dr. McEntarfer was appointed to her post by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2023 after a long career at the Census Bureau and other agencies, where she served under presidents of both parties, including Mr. Trump. Among the Republicans who voted to confirm her as commissioner was Vice President JD Vance, who was then an Ohio senator.

The firing prompted swift criticism from economists, former government officials and others, who said the removal would further erode trust in government statistics and make it more difficult for policymakers, investors and businesses, who rely on having dependable data about the economy to make decisions. In addition to the monthly jobs numbers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is responsible for producing data on inflation, wages and other aspects of the economy.

William W. Beach, who led the bureau during Mr. Trump’s first term, criticized the move to fire Dr. McEntarfer on Friday.

“It’s unfortunate,” he said. “This could set a precedent where bad news on many different fronts is a reason for dismissing a person.”

Mr. Beach, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2019 and remained in the role for the first two years of the Biden administration, said he had never felt pressure to manipulate the data under either president. Even if there were such pressure, he said, there is “no way” the commissioner could interfere in the revisions process, which is conducted by career employees.

Erica Groshen, who led the agency under President Barack Obama, called the decision “a terrible precedent.”

“I hope will be reversed because it undermines the integrity of our statistical system and really all of government data and science,” she added, calling it “a very sad day.”

Dr. McEntarfer’s tenure got off to a rough start last year when the agency made a series of missteps in which Wall Street firms had access to data before the general public. But none of those incidents involved issues with the statistics themselves.

Mr. Trump and his top aides have made a habit of attacking government agencies, researchers and watchdogs when they have produced findings that the president does not like. That has led to concerns that Mr. Trump could seek to interfere with the operations of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other statistical agencies, particularly if the economy begins to take a turn for the worse.

Until now, however, most experts on the statistical system said they remained confident in the data produced by the agencies and had seen no evidence of political interference in their operations. Current and former agency staff members consistently echoed that message — in part, they said, because they trusted Dr. McEntarfer and her counterparts at the other major statistical agencies to protect their independence.

“If that pressure got too great, you would see people resigning rather than shape the numbers,” Mr. Beach said.

Economists across the ideological spectrum said Mr. Trump’s move to oust Dr. McEntarfer was likely to erode public confidence in the data published by the administration.

“If you want people to stop trusting the numbers coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, firing the person who is confirmed by the Senate to make sure those numbers are trustworthy is a real good way to do it,” said Martha Gimbel, the executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale, who served in the White House under Mr. Biden.

Dr. McEntarfer could not immediately be reached for comment.

On Friday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data showing that employers added only 73,000 new jobs in July. It also notably revised data for the previous two months, reducing the number of jobs created by 258,000. While revisions to previous months are common, it was an unusually high number that came as a surprise. It suggested the labor market was not as resilient as it had seemed earlier this summer.

Shortly after the numbers were released, Stephen Miran, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, offered an explanation for the jobs revision that was much different from Mr. Trump’s.

On CNBC, he said much of the change was the result of “quirks in the seasonal adjustment process” and even the president’s own policies, particularly on immigration, potentially affecting hiring numbers for May and June. He made no mention of any concerns about manipulated data as he sought to recast the slowdown in July as a “pretty decent” jobs report.

By evening, Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, sought to frame the firing as an attempt to restore “trust” at the statistics agency. Unlike Mr. Trump, who described the revisions as politically motivated, Mr. Hassett said its jobs figures had been “awful” for some time.

“I think it is a good time for a fresh set of eyes to look at what the heck is going on,” he told Fox Business.

In his social media posts on Friday, Mr. Trump provided no evidence that Dr. McEntarfer had injected political bias into her agency’s data. And his criticisms contained contradictions and inaccuracies.

Mr. Trump complained about not just the latest jobs numbers but also a set of revisions from last year. The bureau, like other statistical agencies, routinely updates its figures to incorporate data that wasn’t initially available or to reflect information from more authoritative sources.

Last August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said employers had added roughly 818,000 fewer jobs over a 12-month period than previously believed. That announcement was part of a normal annual revision process, although the change was unusually large. (It was also preliminary — the final figures were revised down by just under 600,000 jobs.)

In a social media post on Friday, Mr. Trump said the revision was made “right after the election.” In fact, the announcement was made roughly two and a half months before Election Day. Indeed, Mr. Trump posted about the revisions at the time, calling them a “MASSIVE SCANDAL.”

To the agency’s defenders, however, the twin revisions show that it operates without political bias and was willing to announce politically inconvenient news under presidents of both parties.

“President Trump is completely wrong in asserting there’s been any sort of anti-Trump bias in the labor market data,” said Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “I think that assertion is wholly unsupported.”

Mr. Strain said that government data is revised frequently, and that doing so reflected a “standard” practice to ensure its quality. In this case, he acknowledged that the change was “historically large” but “doesn’t smell fishy.”

Federal statistical agencies have faced mounting challenges in recent years as Americans have become more reluctant to respond to the surveys that are the basis for much of the nation’s economic data. Shrinking budgets have made it harder to make up for falling response rates, and to develop new approaches to replace surveys altogether.

Those concerns predate the current administration, but have grown worse since Mr. Trump returned to office. The statistical agencies have struggled with staff attrition as a result of the president’s freeze on federal hiring, combined with the buyouts he offered early in his term. The president’s budget also proposed further staff and funding cuts.

In June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said it was reducing its collection of data on consumer prices in response to resource constraints. Economists warned that, over time, such cuts could erode the reliability of the inflation data that Federal Reserve policymakers rely on when setting interest rates, and that determine cost-of-living increases in union contracts and Social Security benefits, among other uses.

Asked about those cuts on Wednesday, Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said policymakers were “getting the data that we need to do our jobs.” But he stressed the importance of the federal statistical agencies.

“The government data is really the gold standard in data,” he said. “We need it to be good and to be able to rely on it.”

Sydney Ember contributed reporting.

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