President Donald Trump said Friday he plans to immediately fire the Bureau of Labor Statistics leader and said he thought the latest job figures were “rigged.”
After a weak jobs report on Friday, Trump said that Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Dr. Erika McEntarfer would be out of job for past mistakes in jobs reports at key points last year.
“I was just informed that our Country’s ‘Jobs Numbers’ are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, who faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of Victory,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Friday. “This is the same Bureau of Labor Statistics that overstated the Jobs Growth in March 2024 by approximately 818,000 and, then again, right before the 2024 Presidential Election, in August and September, by 112,000. These were Records – No one can be that wrong?”
Trump suggested the BLS jobs report was manipulated for political reasons.
“We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes,” Trump said. “McEntarfer said there were only 73,000 Jobs added (a shock!) but, more importantly, that a major mistake was made by them, 258,000 Jobs downward, in the prior two months.”
Former President Joe Biden appointed McEntarfer in January 2024. The BLS report released Friday showed the U.S. economy added 73,000 jobs in July, while the unemployment rate remained steady at 4.2%. The unemployment rate slightly ticked up from 4.1% in June – returning to May’s rate of 4.2%, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report.
The report noted revisions for May and June numbers “were larger than normal,” the BLS report noted. June revisions show the economy added only 14,000 jobs, down from the previously reported 147,000. May numbers show the economy added only 19,000 jobs, down from the originally reported 144,000.
“Similar things happened in the first part of the year, always to the negative,” Trump said. “The Economy is BOOMING under ‘TRUMP.'”
Heather Long, chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union, said Trump’s decision to fire the BLS leader could reduce confidence in the job numbers.
“President Trump says he is firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after the weak jobs data. BLS puts out the jobs reports, CPI inflation, productivity and employment cost index, among other key statistics,” she said. “This is basically unprecedented and will raise concerns about US data integrity going forward.”
Trump said Friday’s numbers were altered to make him look bad in a social media post later Friday.
“In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad – Just like when they had three great days around the 2024 Presidential Election, and then, those numbers were ‘taken away’ on November 15, 2024, right after the Election, when the Jobs Numbers were massively revised DOWNWARD, making a correction of over 818,000 Jobs — A TOTAL SCAM.”
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman also raised integrity concerns.
“Trump has made a career of calling up down, and calling the truth a lie,” he said in a statement. “But the threat to the integrity of the Bureau of Labor Statistics – the trusted source of objective, factual information about the state of the economy – is a Newspeak project of a whole other level and will undermine not just public understanding but evidence-based policymaking altogether.”
