U.S. President Donald Trump wasted no time firing Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner (BLS) Erika McEntarfer on Friday after a disappointing jobs report sent stocks plunging. Trump asserts McEntarfer “rigged” the data to make the president “look bad.”

McEntarfer graduated with a PhD in Economics from Virginia Tech. The 52-year-old worked as an economist at several government entities, including the Census Bureau and the Council of Economic Advisers. Former President Joe Biden nominated McEntarfer as commissioner of the BLS in 2023. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in January 2024.

(Former Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Erika McEntarfer was fired on Friday for allegedly “rigging” the July jobs report to make U.S. President Donald Trump “look bad.”)

But according to Trump, trouble began brewing during the 2024 November election. The president alleges McEntarfer meddled with jobs data to prop up the Biden administration’s record before voting took place, then he says she revised the numbers downwards after Trump won.

“In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” the president wrote on Truth Social on Friday. “Just like when they had three great days around the 2024 Presidential Election, and then, those numbers were ‘taken away’ on November 15, 2024, right after the Election, when the Jobs Numbers were massively revised DOWNWARD, making a correction of over 818,000 Jobs — A TOTAL SCAM.”

But others refute Trump’s allegations, which so far have not been supported by any credible evidence. Even former BLS Commissioner, William Beach, handpicked by Trump himself, was critical of the president’s actions. “It’s not possible for the commissioner to have that influence,” Beach said during an NBC interview. “The commissioner doesn’t see the numbers until they are completely finished.”

The Friends of BLS, an independent organization that supports the Bureau and is chaired by Beach, Paul Schroeder, and Erica Groshen, rebuked McEntarfer’s dismissal in an official statement, calling the president’s accusations, “baseless.” The entity also sounded the alarm, warning of an erosion of trust in American economic data, if the BLS becomes partisan.

“This rationale for firing Dr. McEntarfer is without merit and undermines the credibility of federal economic statistics,” the statement reads. “When leaders of other nations have politicized economic data, it has destroyed public trust in all official statistics and in government science.”

But Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council defended Trump’s move during a Sunday NBC interview, alleging that the BLS has become increasingly sloppy with its calculations since the Covid pandemic.

“When Covid happened, because response rates went down a lot…revision rates skyrocketed,” Hassett explained. He also claimed that Friday’s downward revisions of 258,000 jobs subtracted from the previous May and June totals were the most significant revisions “since 1965.” “What we need is a fresh set of eyes at the BLS,” Hassett said.

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