President Donald Trump has defended his decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after the latest jobs report, released Friday, Aug. 1. The July numbers showed the economy added just 73,000 jobs, and revisions to May and June wiped out 258,000.
BLS commissioner out: Trump
The president fired BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer, a Biden appointee, last week, accusing her of falsifying job numbers prior to the November election. He said she would be replaced by someone “much more competent and qualified.”
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Aug. 3, the president accused the BLS of manipulating data to undercut him.
“If you remember, just before the election, this woman came out with these phenomenal numbers on Biden’s economy. Phenomenal numbers. And then right after the election, they announced that those numbers were wrong. And that’s what they did the other day. So it’s a scam in my opinion.”
McEntarfer responded to the news of her termination on Friday, Aug. 1, posting to Bluesky that holding the position has been “the honor of my life.”
Latest job numbers
Friday’s job report numbers showed the economy is not doing as well as previously reported. The BJS originally reported that 291,000 jobs were added in May and June. Friday’s report, however, corrected that number to just 19,000.
Trump’s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, backed the president’s move on Fox News Sunday. He said the downward revisions were the biggest in five decades and deserved far more transparency.
“When I first saw the big revisions, which, by the way, were the largest revisions going all the way back for 50 years if we exclude the COVID years, when I saw those revisions, I thought it must be a typo,” said Hassett.
“If I were running the BLS and I had the biggest downward revision in 50 years, I would have a really, really detailed report explaining why it happened so that everybody really trusted the data. ‘We had this move, that move, that move. We had a bunch of people get their responses in late,’ or something like that. But instead, they have this little black box that moves the numbers around and makes people wonder, sometimes with partisan patterns, and I think what we need is a fresh set of eyes at the BLS, somebody who can clean this thing up.”
Republicans question Trump’s decision
Not every Republican is on board.
Republican Sens. Rand Paul, Thom Tillis, and Cynthia Lummis have questioned whether firing McEntarfer was the right decision, suggesting the move could backfire politically.
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Author: Craig Nigrelli
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