President Trump Dismisses Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Following Revised Employment Data

"...Deflect all you want, it won’t change the score. That’s a lesson President Trump has been unwilling to learn...."

"...And while it’s tempting to see the words “Bureau of Labor Statistics” and think, ugh this sounds boring, stay with me...."

"...Because it’s hard to overstate just how crucial it is for businesses and policymakers to have reliable labor data available — and how much Trump’s actions threaten to erode a century’s worth of statistical credibility that the global economy relies on...."

"...Just to underline the point: US federal stats are the gold standard...."

"...They are how we keep a pulse on the giant, messy force that is the world’s biggest economy...."

"...If that data were to become corrupted, that’s the ballgame — businesses and policy makers would be flying blind, making it much harder to prevent (or claw our way out of) a recession...."

"...And right now, as Trump’s tariffs and cuts to social spending take their toll on American consumers, we need that credible data as much as ever...."

"...Trump would rather the numbers simply say what he wants than face the reality that the US economy appears to be weaker today than it was when he took office in January...."

"...The decision to fire McEntarfer “is closer to what one expects from a banana republic than from a major democratic financial center,” wrote Harvard economist Jason Furman over the weekend...."

"...“This is even more senseless than his other threats to fire officials like Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve.”..."

"...More senseless, that is, because McEntarfer doesn’t directly influence US economic policy the way Powell does...."

"...Her job was to manage a team of 2,000 people who send out surveys, compile the answers, and generally take the temperature of the labor market at a steady cadence...."

"...Their job is to hold a mirror up to the economy, and report back what they see, without any spin on the ball...."

"...If you ask a staffer at BLS whether a glass of water is half full or half empty, they’ll tell you “it’s an eight-ounce glass containing four ounces of water.”..."

"...It’s an old quip so foundational to the bureau’s mission that they included it in the “about us” section of its official government website...."

"...The folks working at the bureau are not jokers or partisan hacks — they’re the kids who finished statistics class in high school and thought, yeah, I’m going to do that as a job, while the rest of us let words like sine and cosine fade into the recesses of our minds along with the quadratic equation and the proper conjugations of the Spanish subjunctive tense...."

"...That may be part of the reason Wall Street isn’t freaking out (yet) over McEntarfer’s firing...."

"...The BLS is a 2,000-strong technocratic institution with decades-old processes and procedures that make it hard to singlehandedly skew the data...."

"...But, as my colleague Stephen Collinson notes, the real problems is the message her firing sends to other civic-minded bureaucrats...."

"...“The message is that you might want that data and those conclusions to be to Trump’s liking, or else.”..."