President Donald Trump removed Erika McEntarfer, the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after a weak jobs report showed hiring slowed in July and was much weaker in May and June than previously reported.
Trump claimed that the figures were manipulated for political reasons and provided no evidence to back up his allegations. He stated that McEntarfer should be fired due to her appointment by former President Joe Biden, and expressed frustration with the revisions made to previous hiring data.
McEntarfer’s firing was widely condemned by economists and politicians, who argued that it undermined the credibility of federal economic statistics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics revises jobs numbers down regularly as new data becomes available, but Trump’s criticism threatened to destroy trust in core American institutions.
The disappointing jobs report showed only 73,000 jobs added last month, with revisions to May and June numbers being quite large and surprising to many economists. Economists said that every monthly jobs report includes revisions to the prior two months’ figures, which help provide a more complete picture of employment trends each month.
Trump’s actions were seen as another extraordinary assertion of presidential power, following his attempts to control the international trade system, media companies, America’s top universities, and Congress. His move has raised concerns about the political legitimacy of the U.S. government’s economic data, which is widely accepted globally as the “gold standard” of economic measurement.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/trump-jobs-firing-f00e9bf96d0110519be9bf4f3ec89195