Following a disappointing jobs report on Friday, President Donald Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner.
Dr. Erika McEntarfer was appointed to the BLS in January 2024 by former President Joe Biden.
“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,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”
On Friday afternoon, BLS confirmed to Business Insider that McEntarfer was terminated.
During the search for McEntarfer’s replacement, Deputy Commissioner William Wiatrowski will serve as Acting Commissioner, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said on X.
The US economy added 73,000 jobs in July, missing the expected 106,000, and revisions showed that there were far fewer jobs created in May and June than initially reported.
Revisions to the jobs figures are not uncommon as BLS collects additional data in the months after the initial estimates, although the Bureau noted that this month’s revisions were “larger than normal.”
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Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Yale Budget Lab, wrote on X that “BLS payroll numbers ‘overstated’ employment by half a million in 2019 as well. Every economist who knows the 1st thing about labor data knows this has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the challenges of real-time jobs estimation in the world’s biggest economy.” In another post, he added that “shooting the messenger does nothing.”
Economists raise alarm that BLS firing will erode public trust
Alongside a dip in Friday’s jobs numbers, unemployment ticked up to 4.2%. Labor force participation also declined, falling to 62.2% in July from 62.3%.
Trump wrote that the Friday jobs report was a “major mistake” and “The Economy is BOOMING under ‘TRUMP.’”
Secretary Chavez-DeRemer wrote on X that she agrees “wholeheartedly” with Trump: “Our jobs numbers must be fair, accurate, and never manipulated for political purposes.”
Economists warned Friday that the president’s planned firing of McEntarfer and raising suspicion about BLS data could have dire consequences.
“Firing the head of the BLS is five-alarm intentional harm to the integrity of US economic data and the entire statistical system,” Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former Under Secretary for Economic Affairs at the US Department of Commerce, wrote on X.
“Even if nothing in BLS processes actually changes, public trust is permanently harmed when the BLS commissioner is fired after one bad jobs report,” Executive Director of Employ America Skanda Amarnath wrote on X.
“I worked very closely with Commissioner Beach, the prior BLS commissioner, who was appointed by Donald Trump, and then Dr. McEntarfer to understand the numbers and be able to share them, to be able to talk about them, to use them to analyze whether the policies that we were pursuing was actually benefiting the American people,” Julie Su, the former acting Secretary of Labor in former President Joe Biden’s administration, told Business Insider. “This is just a typical move by someone who hates real facts because they tell the truth about how much damage he’s doing.”
“The American people rely on a nonpartisan Bureau of Labor Statistics to help them make informed financial decisions and better understand our economic health,” Max Stier, the president and CEO of Partnership for Public Service, told Business Insider.
Stier added: “Governments that go down this path find themselves in ugly territory very quickly.”
“If policymakers and the public start to doubt the integrity of the numbers, confidence will collapse—creating chaos that will reduce business investment and consumer spending,” Heidi Shierholz, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, told BI.
“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,” William Beach, an economist and former Commissioner of Labor Statistics, said in a post on X.
The president also took aim at the Federal Reserve, which announced Wednesday it will hold rates steady for the fifth time this year. Trump said Friday that the Fed “plays games” and Chair Jerome Powell “should also be put ‘out to pasture.’” The president has repeatedly spoken about firing Powell in recent months.
The White House and the Department of Labor referred Business Insider to Chavez-DeRemer’s X post when asked for comment.