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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Former BLS commissioner says firing her was a ‘dangerous’ step for
the US economy
By Elisabeth Buchwald, CNN
Updated:
7:23 PM EDT, Tue September 16, 2025
Source: CNN
When the July jobs report was first released on August 1, it didn’t
feel any different for Erika McEntarfer, former commissioner at the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared to when other employment reports
came out.
But that quickly changed after she learned that President Donald Trump
had taken to Truth Social to publicly announce her firing. Soon, she
was on her way to “becoming a household name,” McEntarfer said
Tuesday in her first public remarks since her departure from the BLS.
McEntarfer was fired that the US economy added just 73,000 jobs in July
and the monthly totals for May and June were revised down by a combined
258,000 jobs. Trump claimed, without evidence, that the disappointing
jobs report had been “rigged.”
Her lecture at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, her alma
mater, comes as questions swirl about the integrity of government data
as Trump has sought greater control of the agency and tariffs appear to
be hurting the economy.
Speaking to a crowd of fellow alumni, students, professors and
reporters, McEntarfer said Tuesday that she only learned of her firing
when a reporter reached out to her for comment following a Trump post
on Truth Social announcing her termination. She didn’t believe it at
first, she said.
Then she noticed an earlier email from the White House Presidential
Personnel Office stating only the following:
“Dr. McEntarfer: On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing
to inform you that your position at the Bureau of Labor Statistics has
been terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service.”
“Firing your chief statistician is a dangerous step,” she said.
“That’s an attack on the independence of an institution arguably as
important as the Federal Reserve for economic stability. It has serious
economic consequences, but that they would do this with no warning —
it made no sense.”
“Messing with economic data is like messing with the traffic lights
and turning the sensors off. Cars don’t know where to go, traffic
backs up at intersections,” she said, a nod to the concerns many
economists have raised since her firing.
Before her firing, McEntarfer’s biggest concern with the monthly jobs
reports and other economic reports the BLS publishes was funding
shortfalls that made it harder to conduct surveys that inform the data,
she said. That’s been especially true as response rates to the
agency’s surveys have fallen. But that has not impacted the accuracy
of the data, she said.
“But after the events of the last six weeks, I’m afraid we have to
fear for the (data) dependence of the agencies themselves.”
Entirely caught off guard
Before the release of any jobs report during her time at the BLS,
McEntarfer and her team would brief members of the White House a day
before the data is made public.
McEntarfer said she “did not get the sense” that anything was wrong
when briefing the White House last month. She fielded what she
considers “normal” questions when economists are trying to make
sense of new data, she said.
She acknowledged that the downward jobs revisions from prior months’
employment reports, which were included in the July jobs report, were
unusually large. This prompted her to devote more time during the
briefing to explain why that was the case, she said.
Such revisions, however, are considered a feature and not a bug of
economic data, which is frequently revised – especially as more
comprehensive information becomes readily available – to provide a
clearer, more accurate picture of the dynamics in play.
On Tuesday, McEntarfer said that late-responding firms were the
principal reason for the negative revision that preceded her firing.
That dynamic was explained by McEntarfer and her staff during their
monthly pre-jobs report briefing to the White House.
She told White House economists that revisions as large as the May and
June jobs data tend to occur “when the economy slows,” she said.
During the briefing, White House officials asked her: Was the skew
disproportionately among small firms, and when was the last time this
happened?
“It was a pretty broad-based, negative skew,” she said, noting that
the last time this happened was in the early months of the pandemic.
Businesses were likely responding late to the survey “because
they’re just too busy trying to stay alive.”
This story has been updated with additional context and developments.
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