WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S President Donald Trump on Friday ordered that the commissioner of the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Erika McEntarfer be fired after data showed weaker than expected employment growth in July and massive downward revisions to the prior two months’ job counts.
McEntarfer was nominated by former President Joe Biden to serve in the role in 2023 and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate the following year. It was not immediately clear whether McEntarfer, whom Trump accused of faking the jobs numbers, had been fired.
“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 said in a post on Truth Social.
There is no evidence to back Trump’s claims of data manipulation by the BLS, the statistical agency that compiles the closely watched employment report as well as consumer and producer price data.
The White House did not respond immediately to questions about Trump’s post.
The order to dismiss McEntarfer comes at a time when the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of federal government workers have raised concerns about the quality of U.S. economic data, long seen as the gold standard.
Earlier this year, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick disbanded two expert committees that worked with the government to produce economic statistics. Lutnick has also floated the idea of stripping out government spending from the gross domestic product report, claiming “governments historically have messed with GDP.”
The BLS has already reduced data collection for the consumer price data as well as the producer price report.
Economists attributed the sharply slower job growth to Trump’s trade and immigration policies. The economy created only 73,000 jobs in July. Data for May and June were revised sharply down to show 258,000 fewer jobs created than had been previously reported.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward and Lucia Mutikani; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Chris Reese)
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