President Trump said in a social media post Friday afternoon that he directed members of his administration to fire Erika McEntarfer, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after the BLS on Friday published a July jobs report that contained what it called “larger than normal” revisions to data from May and June.
The July jobs report published Friday morning showed the US economy added 73,000 jobs last month, fewer than expected, while the unemployment rate rose to 4.2%.
The most notable numbers to emerge from the report, however, were downward revisions to job gains in May and June, which saw 258,000 jobs taken away from what had been initially reported.
May’s job gains were revised down to 19,000 from 144,000, while June’s additions were cut to just 14,000 from the 147,000 initially reported.
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer appeared to confirm McEntarfer’s firing in a post on X, saying Deputy Commissioner William Wiatrowski would serve as interim head of the BLS. McEntarfer was confirmed as BLS commissioner by an 86-8 Senate vote back in January.
In its release on Friday, the BLS said these revisions “result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.”
As he left the White House for the weekend later Friday, President Trump repeated his charges, without providing evidence, that McEntarfer was acting politically and that her “numbers were wrong.”
He added that he would begin reviewing candidates for her permanent replacement soon and that he has three people in particular in mind without revealing their names.
He responded to the question of whether the candidates he is focused on have labor statistics experience by saying, “I’ll put someone in who’s going to be honest.”
Economists, meanwhile, on Friday were near-unanimous in their view that July’s jobs data and the revisions to May and June reflect a labor market that is far weaker than had been suggested by recent data and characterizations by some officials, notably Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
“The ‘solid’ state of the labor market described by the FOMC earlier this week looks more questionable after the July employment report,” Wells Fargo senior economist Sarah House wrote in a note Friday.
Job gains over the last three months have now averaged just 35,000 after Friday’s revisions.
In his post on Friday, Trump accused McEntarfer and the BLS of reporting “faked” jobs numbers in the run-up to last year’s election, and noted February’s benchmark revision to 2024 jobs data that showed payroll growth last year was overstated by some 818,000 jobs.
