President Donald Trump said on Friday that he ordered his team to fire Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after Friday’s jobs report showed that the U.S. job market underperformed expectations last month and made major negative revisions to previous reports.
Trump accused McEntarfer, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden, of faking jobs numbers “before the Election to try and boost” the chances of former Vice President Kamala Harris. The July jobs report showed that growth was slower than expected at 73,000 jobs added, while unemployment slightly ticked up to 4.2%, in line with predictions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also made major revisions to the May and June reports, marking down nonfarm payrolls by nearly 260,000 in the two months combined.
“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,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“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,” he added. “Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”
NBC News reported that a Trump official confirmed the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner had been fired. McEntarfer has spent the last 20 years of her career working in the federal government, hopping from the Census Bureau to the Treasury Department to the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ deputy director is Bill Wiatrowski, who started under former President Barack Obama.
In a follow-up post later on Friday, Trump wrote, “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.”
The 818,000 jobs revision from the Bureau of Labor Statistics came in August of last year, three months before the 2024 election, not after the election as the president claimed. That downward revision was for total U.S. job gains over a 12-month period ending in March 2024.
The president tore into McEntarfer for the revision of recent jobs reports, saying, “Similar things happened in the first part of the year, always to the negative.” He then called for Fed Chair Jerome Powell to “also be put ‘out to pasture,’” along with McEntarfer.
“The Economy is BOOMING under ‘TRUMP’ despite a Fed that also plays games, this time with Interest Rates, where they lowered them twice, and substantially, just before the Presidential Election, I assume in the hopes of getting ‘Kamala’ elected – How did that work out? Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should also be put ‘out to pasture.’ Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
