Economic damage intensifies with Trump's strategy of punishing messengers
The past three months have seen the weakest job growth since 2010, with fewer jobs added than previously estimated over the past three months (106,000 total versus roughly 150,000 each month that economists consider healthy). This worrying trend has been further compounded by the revisions to the May and June numbers, which showed a sharp downward revision, with May's total revised lower to 19,000 and June adding just 14,000 jobs, down from preliminary estimates of 139,000 and 147,000 respectively.
These revisions were due to payroll surveys that employers returned late, resulting in a more accurate picture. However, the President's response to these figures has been controversial. Trump claimed that the monthly jobs numbers were "RIGGED" and "phony". In a move that has sparked widespread concern, President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Erika McEntarfer, on Friday.
The BLS is a 2,000-strong technocratic institution with decades-old processes and procedures that make it hard to singlehandedly skew the data. McEntarfer's job was to manage a team of 2,000 people who send out surveys, compile the answers, and generally take the temperature of the labor market at a steady cadence. Attacking independence damages the credibility of the statistics, and credible statistics and agency independence go hand in hand, according to Aaron Sojourner, a labor economist and senior researcher at the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
The firing of McEntarfer threatens the credibility of US federal statistics by undermining the long-standing perception of BLS as an apolitical, trustworthy source of economic data. This move, driven by unsubstantiated claims that the jobs data was "rigged" for political reasons, raises concerns about potential political interference in economic reporting, which could cast doubt on the integrity of US labor and economic statistics globally.
The BLS is widely regarded as the "gold standard" of economic measurement, trusted by economists, policymakers, and international markets for accurate, unbiased data on employment and inflation. McEntarfer was respected for over 20 years of experience, and the agency's role has traditionally been nonpartisan, focused on producing accurate data regardless of political pressure.
Removing her after a significant downward revision in jobs data—specifically, the July 2025 report showing weaker job growth and sharp downward revisions for May and June—introduces fears that the BLS’s independence is being compromised. This could erode investor and market confidence in US economic statistics, which play a vital role in global economic decisions and financial markets.
Internationally, the impact could be profound because the US economic data influences global market expectations, trade policy, and investment decisions. Doubts about data integrity might increase economic uncertainty and volatility, reducing trust in US economic leadership and potentially affecting global financial markets and economic policymaking.
Harvard economist Jason Furman wrote that Trump's decision to fire McEntarfer is closer to what one expects from a banana republic than from a major democratic financial center. The revisions to the May and June numbers were historically large, but not unprecedented. The President's actions threaten to erode a century's worth of statistical credibility that the global economy relies on.
The President's contentious response to the revised jobs data has sparked debates in the realm of politics and policy-and-legislation, with Trump asserting that the monthly jobs numbers are "RIGGED" and "phony". This controversy culminated in the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Erika McEntarfer, raising general-news concerns about potential political interference in economic reporting.
