Trump orders labour statistics official fired after weak jobs report
President wants the head of the US Bureau of Labour Statistics sacked, says Fed chair Jerome Powell should be ‘put out to pasture’
US President Donald Trump said on Friday he had ordered the commissioner of the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, fired, alleging data falsification, not long after July’s disappointing jobs numbers challenged his claim of a burgeoning American economy.
The latest BLS data, which had been released earlier on Friday, showed employment growth last month was anaemic, with a gain of merely 73,000 non-farm jobs, below market expectations of an increase of more than 100,000 jobs.
Furthermore, the Labour Department lowered its payroll count for May and June by a combined 258,000 jobs, the largest downward revision for a preceding two-month period since March and April 2020, at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The department has lowered month-earlier numbers each month so far this year.
The downward revision trend “has the potential to bring July’s positive employment reading into negative territory”, Eugenio Alemán, chief economist at Raymond James, said in a research note.
“This is not a guarantee,” he added. “Nothing prevents the revision to July’s number from being positive, but year to date, the BLS has revised 2025 employment numbers by -461,000, which is not a great harbinger for what may be in store for the Federal Reserve (Fed) and markets going forward.”
The bleak jobs picture came as a blow to Trump’s sanguine take on the economy after US gross domestic product expanded in the second quarter by 3 per cent.