President Donald Trump on Friday fired the Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after slamming the latest jobs numbers, calling them ‘rigged’. McEntarfer’s predecessor, meanwhile, called the removal ‘groundless’, slamming the president for his decision. Earlier in the day, a report showed US job growth cooled sharply over the last three months.
The BLS jobs report showed payrolls increased by 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.
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Soon after the report was out, Trump wrote a scathing post on Truth Social.
“I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified,” he said.
Trump later posted: “In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.”
Former BLS commissioner slams Trump
William Beach slammed Trump in a lengthy statement on Friday. “The totally groundless firing of Dr. Erika McEntarfer, my successor as Commissioner of Labor Statistics at BLS, sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau,” he said on X, platform formerly known as Twitter.
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“The President seeks to blame someone for unwelcome economic news. The Commissioner does not determine what the numbers are but simply reports on what the data show. The process of obtaining the numbers is decentralized by design to avoid opportunities for interference. The BLS uses the same proven, transparent, reliable process to produce estimates every month. Every month, BLS revises the prior two months’ employment estimates to reflect slower-arriving, more-accurate information,” Beach added.
He said that the ‘rationale for firing’ 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’.
“US official statistics are the gold standard globally. When leaders of other nations have politicized economic data, it has destroyed public trust in all official statistics and in government science.”