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 on Friday, 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.
Mr. Trump’s post came 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. She said William Wiatrowski, the deputy commissioner, would serve as acting commissioner during the search for Dr. McEntarfer’s replacement.
Dr. McEntarfer was appointed to her post by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2023 and confirmed by the Senate in 2024, after a long career at the Census Bureau and other agencies, where she served under presidents of both parties, including Mr. Trump.
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.
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 on Friday said Ms. 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. The Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Only hours earlier, Stephen Miran, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, offered a much different explanation for the jobs revision.
In an appearance 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.
Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said: “President Trump is completely wrong in asserting there’s been any sort of anti-Trump bias in the labor market data. 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,” citing a range of possible causes, from declining response rates to underfunding at federal agencies.
Ben Casselman is the chief economics correspondent for The Times. He has reported on the economy for nearly 20 years.
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
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