Trump’s Former Jobs Data Chief Says ‘There’s No Way’ President’s Claim About ‘Faked’ Numbers Is True
A former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics appointed by President Donald Trump said Trump’s accusations against the agency are false.
Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday after the agency said the economy added just 73,000 jobs in July. The BLS also released downward revisions of jobs data from May and June, showing that the economy added 258,000 fewer jobs than initially reported. Citing no evidence, the president claimed the numbers were inaccurate and accused McEntarfer of having “faked the Jobs Numbers” to hurt him.
The BLS commissioner is appointed by the president and serves a four-year term. McEntarfer was appointed by former President Joe Biden in January 2024 and succeeded former commissioner William Beach, who appeared on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
“The president said that the BLS commissioner rigged these numbers,” Kasie Hunt noted to Beach. “What do you think?”
Beach explained:
There’s no way for that to happen. The commissioner doesn’t do anything to collect the numbers. The commissioner doesn’t see the numbers until Wednesday before they’re published. By the time the commissioner sees the numbers, they’re all prepared. They’re locked into the computer system. The only thing the commissioner does on Wednesday is to kind of do the edits on the text.
So, there’s no hands-on at all for the commissioner. I was commissioner, and I was sometimes locked out of the process of actually, where the people were working in the building. So, there’s no way for doing that.
What I think really upset the president on Friday were the revisions to May and June, big revisions. But that’s because, like every time we publish on Friday, there are revisions to the previous two months. This is a survey, and a survey has sample returns.
Beach went on to say, “I don’t think there’s any grounds at all for this firing, and it really hurts the statistical system. It undermines credibility in BLS.” He added that people may be disinclined to believe BLS data in the future.
“So, this is damaging,” Beach concluded. “This is not what we need to have.”
Watch above via CNN.
