Desk Report,
Trump fires top official for allegedly giving false information about job market
US President Donald Trump has ordered the dismissal of Erica McEntire, the commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. He issued the order on Friday.
Trump accused McEntire of distorting the number of jobs in the US labor market for political purposes. Trump did not provide any evidence to support this accusation.
Trump fires top official for allegedly giving false information about job market
According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 73,000 jobs were created in the United States in July, which is much lower than expected. In addition, major revisions were made to the employment data for May and June. The amendment reduced the number of jobs in May from 144,000 to 19,000 and the number of jobs in June from 147,000 to 14,000. Trump expressed his anger on his social media account Truth Social, writing, “These numbers were fabricated to make me and the Republicans look bad.”
In a separate post on Truth Social, Trump claimed that McEntire intentionally understated the number of jobs “to help Democrats win the election.”
Trump told reporters, “We need people we can trust. McEntire overstated the number of jobs during his tenure in the Biden administration.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in the United States rose to 4.2 percent in July from 4.1 percent. This is the first time the job market has deteriorated this much since the Corona pandemic.
According to experts, the Trump administration’s new tariff policies and uncertainty in foreign trade since the beginning of the year have given a big blow to business investment and hiring plans.
Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said the report is a “game changer.” The labor market is deteriorating rapidly. She said that 75 percent of the new jobs created in July came from the health care sector.
In this situation, the pressure on the central bank to cut interest rates is increasing.
Two top Fed officials, Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller, said that tariff-induced inflation is temporary and that the labor market could be further damaged if interest rates are not reduced now.
Trump’s dismissal order has caused strong reactions among economists and analysts.
“This is a dangerous precedent that undermines the impartiality and independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” said William Beach, former head of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The National Association for Business Economics (NABE) said in a statement that “large revisions to the numbers do not necessarily mean fraud; rather, they are an indication of ongoing budget constraints in statistical offices.”
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said, “Firing officials if you don’t like the numbers is the job of a dictatorship—not a democracy.”
