President Trump on Friday directed his team to fire the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics following a dismal jobs report he blamed squarely on the appointee of former President Biden.
Trump said on Truth Social that the commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, had “faked the Jobs Numbers” before the 2024 election in order to boost former Vice President Kamala Harris’s White House bid.
An administration official later confirmed the firing.
Trump cited labor statistics revisions during the Biden administration that boosted job numbers ahead of the election. The jobs report released Friday showed a significant downturn during Trump’s administration in May and June, indicating the U.S. added 258,000 fewer jobs over those months than had initially been reported.
“No one can be that wrong?” Trump said. “We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”
McEntarfer was nominated by Biden in 2023 and confirmed by the Senate in 2024 as the 16th commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is part of the Department of Labor. She was confirmed in the Senate in a bipartisan 86-8 vote. Notably, Vice President Vance and secretary of State Marco Rubio, who were both senators at the time, voted in favor of her nomination.
The president suggested that the jobs report was politically motivated, an argument he has also made when he railed against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for not lowering interest rates.
“The Economy is BOOMING under ‘TRUMP’ despite a Fed that also plays games, this time with Interest Rates, where they lowered them twice, and substantially, just before the Presidential Election, I assume in the hopes of getting ‘Kamala’ elected – How did that work out? Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should also be put ‘out to pasture,’” Trump said.
In a second social media post, Trump borrowed a label from when he contested his 2020 election loss, calling the latest jobs report “rigged.”
“In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” Trump said.
The White House earlier on Friday acknowledged that the jobs report, which showed the U.S. added only 73,000 jobs in July, was dismal.
“This jobs report isn’t ideal. There’s no way around that,” top White House economist Stephen Miran told CNN. “The downward revisions reflect a couple of anomalous factors. First of all, about 60 percent of the downward revision is due to quirks of the seasonal adjustment process.”
Trump on Friday also lodged insults again at Powell for not lowering interest rates, urging the central bank board to wrest control from him. He has also threatened to fire Powell and last month told GOP lawmakers he would soon move to do so before backing off.
This story was updated at 3:55 p.m.
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