Trump’s Risky BLS Firing
The Bureau of Labor Statistics hasn’t exactly been reliable under Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, but firing her might not work out as well as the president intends.
In August 2024, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issued a massive correction to the number of jobs created under Joe Biden. BLS revised downward a year’s worth of “jobs created” numbers by a whopping 818,000. It was the largest revision in 15 years, and it marked one heck of an “oops!”
On Friday, President Donald Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after yet another major (albeit relatively smaller) revision to this summer’s jobs numbers. According to the Associated Press, “Friday’s jobs report showed that just 73,000 jobs were added last month and that 258,000 fewer jobs were created in May and June than previously estimated.”
Trump clearly wasn’t happy.
“I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said on Truth Social. “She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.” He called the numbers a “scam,” later adding, “In my opinion, [Friday’s] Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.” He sees her firing as part of a larger overhaul of the BLS.
Revisiting last year’s revisions, Trump accused the BLS of having “faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala [Harris]‘s chances of Victory.” Some may claim that’s an odd way to help Harris (not to mention that it didn’t work), but most Americans see the initial reports, not the revisions. For example, ABC News was the only network to report on the revision last summer, and it did so for all of 19 seconds.
That’s because Leftmedia outlets saw their job as helping Joe Biden perpetuate one of his biggest lies — the millions of jobs he “created” when those were actually just people returning to work after losing jobs in 2020.
Biden nominated McEntarfer in July 2023, and she was confirmed 86-8 in the Senate in January 2024. She called it “the honor of my life to serve as Commissioner of BLS,” though I note that she posted that on Bluesky, the social media site for left-wingers upset about how fair X has become.
People frequently accuse Trump of destroying the “norms” and niceties of Washington, DC, but often, his only contribution is that he’s the subject of Trump Derangement Syndrome for the people who are actually blowing up those norms.
Bureaucrats up and down the line do that all day every day, and then they scream about Trump’s “baseless” and “groundless” actions, or “unprecedented attacks.” That’s how this firing was framed by Bill Beach, a BLS commissioner during Trump’s first term.
It’s true that BLS revisions happen every month, as jobs are either added to or subtracted from the previous two months’ reports. In recent years, these revisions have shown bigger swings, at least in part because fewer businesses respond to surveys. Before COVID, 60% of companies responded with numbers. That number is now just 43%.
There’s a catch-22 here: The less business owners and people in general trust the government, the less likely they are to provide voluntary data — especially when they have better things to do than spend time on another government report. That then makes the data less reliable, fomenting further distrust. Trump is both responding to and feeding that suspicion. Just wait until he puts his own people in place at BLS, and Democrats will go into convulsions about every jobs report.
“Bottom line, Trump wants to cook the books,” said Senator Ron Wyden after the firing. Senator Bernie Sanders called it “very dangerous” and “another step in Trump’s moving this country toward authoritarianism.”
Meet the new narrative, same as the old narrative.
There’s also an irony: Trump may have sown the seeds for the revisions. As Trump changes tariff rates and ramps up deportations, companies face a certain level of uncertainty and upheaval that leads to less hiring and slower reporting. I’m not saying he isn’t pursuing worthy goals. I’m saying the great economist Thomas Sowell was right when he wrote, “There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.”
Furthermore, Trump runs a major risk with this firing. Whether through his own performance or media narratives about that performance — or a combination — Americans are less enthusiastic about Trump’s economic record in his second term than they were in his first. I warned about this back in March.
If the president appears to be covering for a weaker-than-expected economic performance by firing people who measure things in a way he doesn’t like, only to replace them with people who tell him what he wants to hear, that’s going to further weaken public perception. Or, if those new people also report rough numbers, it’ll reinforce Democrat attacks. Neither works out well for Trump, even if his economic work deserves better marks.
Don’t get me wrong. Thousands of swamp bureaucrats are all too happy to do whatever it takes to make Trump look bad. Maybe McEntarfer was one of them. Trump has certainly learned that from years of hard experience. Draining the swamp isn’t always going to be clean or easy, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary.
