When the federal government revealed last month a sharp contraction in the nation’s hiring, President Trump attacked the report and abruptly fired the longtime civil servant responsible for overseeing the data.
On Tuesday, Erika McEntarfer, the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, offered her first major public comments on her ouster. She warned about the rising risk of political interference in the government’s work to measure the economy, stressing that it could harm consumers and businesses.
“Economic data must be free from partisan influence,” she said.
Ms. McEntarfer voiced her fears during a speech at Bard College in New York, her alma mater, more than one month after Mr. Trump dismissed her over his widely condemned claims that federal hiring data had been “rigged.” The report that month showed the economy had added about 250,000 fewer jobs this summer than the government first estimated, a revision that the president claimed — without evidence — had been manipulated to hurt him politically.
Ms. McEntarfer on Tuesday steered clear of addressing Mr. Trump directly, saying at one point she generally did not want to “speculate on what the plan is or the intentions of the administration are.”
But she repeatedly emphasized the risk in allowing politics to infect the work of B.L.S., whose reports inform policymakers, investors, businesses and others that require dependable economic data to make decisions. And she called attention to what she described as steep and persistent shortfalls in the agency’s staff and budget. Those gaps, she said, further complicated Washington’s task to reliably track the labor market, the ebb and flow of prices, and the nation’s overall growth.
“Markets have to trust the data are not manipulated,” Ms. McEntarfer added. “Firing your chief statisticians for releasing data you do not like, it has serious economic consequences. The list of countries that have gone down this route, it’s not a good list.”
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The post Fired by Trump, a Former Labor Official Warns Against Politicizing Economic Data appeared first on New York Times.
