“President Donald Trump on Friday removed the head of the agency that produces the monthly jobs figures after a report showed hiring slowed in July and was much weaker in May and June than previously reported. Trump, in a post on his social media platform, alleged that the figures were manipulated for political reasons and said that Erika McEntarfer, the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, should be fired…

“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… The revisions to the May and June numbers were quite large and surprising to many economists. At the same time, every monthly jobs report includes revisions to the prior two months’ figures. Those revisions occur as the government receives more responses from businesses to its survey.” AP News

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All sides are critical of claims that the BLS data was manipulated for political purposes:


“The data undergoes rigorous statistical analysis, and accuracy is prioritized above all else. Importantly, the BLS commissioner does not even see the finalized survey results until the Wednesday before release—just one day prior to briefing the president. The idea that the commissioner could somehow manipulate or ‘cook the books’ within a 24-hour period is absurd on its face…

“If future BLS leadership feels pressured to produce data favorable to the administration, the credibility of America's economic statistics—long considered the global gold standard—could collapse. We've seen this elsewhere. Argentina and Turkey manipulated economic data for political gain, causing investor panic, currency devaluation, and devastating economic instability.”
Dan Koh, The Contrarian

“The truth is that the jobs numbers have become more volatile in recent years because of declining business survey response rates. It’s similar to the problem political pollsters face getting representative samples… It’s also plausible that small businesses that responded late to the BLS surveys this spring hired fewer employees or laid off more of them than bigger establishments…

“Mom-and-pop restaurants might have lost immigrant workers and struggled to replace them. Small manufacturers with tight margins might have reduced jobs in response to tariff costs and uncertainty… Mr. Trump does himself and his party no favors by waving away economic reality. Democrats spent the Biden presidency playing down inflation, and look where it got them.”
Allysia Finley, Wall Street Journal

“If the BLS had been out to get Trump, revising numbers downward wouldn’t be the way to do it. The revisions usually don’t get as much media attention as the headline figures. If May’s number had initially been reported as just +19K jobs instead of being revised down later, and June at +14K, there would have been more concern from investors for the past couple of months and more of a narrative that Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs, announced on April 2, were already taking their toll on Main Street.”
Nate Silver, Silver Bulletin

“It’s also hard to see how this helps Trump. If Trump installs somebody at BLS who produces great numbers, anybody who isn’t already one of his supporters will dismiss them and assume that the appointee was producing the positive data to keep the boss happy. And if the numbers produced by his own appointee turn out to be bad, it will make them even more convincing.”
Philip Klein, National Review

“Trying to intimidate the Bureau of Labor Statistics is the policy equivalent of smashing your bathroom scale… On the margin, a few voters might be fooled into thinking economic conditions are better than they really are. But the trick can work only so far — as the Biden administration found out when it tried to gaslight voters into believing that everything in the White House was going just great…  

“The people most susceptible to the spin fall into two groups: the president’s base, who don’t need it, and high-information voters who pay close attention to economic data, many of whom will understand how the numbers have been juked, and most of whom probably already know which side they’re voting for next time around.”
Megan McArdle, Washington Post

Other opinions below.