WASHINGTON (AP) — “Depressing.”
“CRAZY!!”
That's how staff at the Bureau of Labor Statistics reacted after President Donald Trump fired its commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, after a dismal jobs report issued Aug. 1 undermined the White House's claims of an economic boom.
The emails obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act suggest an agency with little of the corrupting partisanship that Trump had claimed. He called the report “phony” and “rigged” after it indicated a paltry 73,000 jobs were added in July and after downward revisions that showed 258,000 fewer jobs were added in May and June than previously reported.
After the commissioner's firing, BLS employees talked about the importance of accurate numbers and professional integrity in producing data that is foundational for measuring the economy and holding elected officials accountable for how the nation performs.
Officials at the agency sought to rally morale by focusing on their task at hand at a time when outside economists wondered if Trump had compromised the credibility of reports on jobs, inflation and other key economic indicators. The president has said without evidence that the numbers were meant to make him and other Republicans look bad — his latest effort to interfere with the functions of executive branch agencies, including the Federal Reserve.
“This news is sudden, but our mission is unchanged — to provide high quality data to the nation,” William Wiatrowski, the acting commissioner, told the staff in an email. “Thank you for all the good work you do.”
One assistant commissioner told staff to persevere just as a ship's crew might after losing its captain.
“We may have lost our captain but the ship will not go down,” the assistant commissioner wrote. “We will neither hit an iceberg and sink to the ocean floor, nor run aground on a low-lying shoal. We are not rudderless. We remain ... guided by our mission to provide gold-standard statistics the public can trust.”
For her part, McEntarfer stayed stoic in her email to staff, choosing not to dwell on her firing by the president. Instead, she thanked BLS employees for the importance of their work.
"Our data moves markets because it is some of the most timely and accurate information on economic conditions that businesses and policymakers have," she wrote. “BLS data impacts the decisions of the Fed, the President, Congress, and millions of businesses and households. The work of this agency is vital to the US economy.”
The White House maintains that McEntarfer was removed because the size of the revisions suggested that the monthly jobs report was flawed. As part of each jobs report, the BLS revises the prior months' data two times. It also issues an annual benchmark revision after getting more complete survey information, an effort that is meant to balance being timely with being accurate.
Trump announced Monday that he would nominate E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to lead the BLS.
Antoni told Fox News Digital in an interview before the announcement that the BLS “should suspend issuing the monthly job reports” because of inaccuracies and offer quarterly updates instead.
When asked at Tuesday's White House briefing whether the monthly jobs report would continue to be released, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration hoped it would be.
“I believe that is the plan and that’s the hope,” Leavitt said.
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