President Donald Trump’s historical past of criticizing the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs report has surfaced within the wake of his determination to fire commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday.
Trump’s public frustrations with the economics and statistics company seem so far again to his 2016 presidential marketing campaign. “Do not consider these phony numbers,” then-candidate Trump mentioned in his New Hampshire victory speech throughout his first marketing campaign for the White Home.
Final August, Trump claimed with out proof that former President Joe Biden’s administration was “caught fraudulently manipulating” job statistics, when the company publicly disclosed that the financial system created fewer than 818,000 jobs between April of 2023 and March of 2024 than preliminary estimates instructed.
“There’s by no means been any revision like this,” Trump mentioned at a marketing campaign rally in North Carolina on Aug. 21, 2024. “They needed it to come back out after the election, however in some way it obtained leaked,” he claimed on the time.
Dr. Erika McEntarfer, Commissioner of Labor Statistics.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Trump didn’t present proof that the knowledge publicly disclosed by the company was leaked.
Then-Labor Secretary Julie Su in November 2024 defended the figures, and likewise instructed the numbers have been impacted by Hurricane Helene’s influence on the southeastern United States, and labor strikes.
“The labor market stays very sturdy, and this exhibits what occurs when you have got a president and a vice chairman who’re combating for employees each single day,” Su mentioned on the time.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) makes use of a number of surveys for estimating employment ranges within the U.S. and revisions are widespread. Each month-to-month Jobs Report has a blurb on the finish that updates the figures from the earlier two months primarily based on new information.
President Donald Trump walks to board Marine One to depart for New Jersey, on the White Home in Washington, Aug. 1, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
The revision that Trump was referencing was made public on Aug. 21, and up to date with last figures in February 2025, in response to the BLS web site.
The identical downward revisions additionally befell throughout Trump’s first time period, below then-BLS commissioner William W. Seashore. The company decided 518,000 fewer jobs have been created in March 2019 than it had initially reported.
Alternatively, Trump had no complaints in regards to the jobs report produced below McEntarfer — a Biden appointee — proper earlier than the 2024 election, which confirmed the U.S. gained 12,000 jobs in October.
The then-candidate referenced the low numbers whereas criticizing the Biden-Harris administration at a rally in Milwaukee.
“They did 12,000 jobs,” Trump mentioned to boos on the rally on Nov. 1. “It is lots of of hundreds of jobs lower than it must be,” he added.
Trump was additionally fast to embrace the roles stories as president — once they have been favorable.
In March 2017 — when the Bureau of Labor Statistics introduced that the financial system added 235,000 jobs the prior month — then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer mentioned Trump had full religion within the constructive report, regardless of calling it “phony” prior to now.
“I talked to the president previous to this and he mentioned to cite him very clearly: ‘They could have been phony prior to now, however it’s very actual now,'” Spicer mentioned to reporters on the time.
Trump’s determination to fireside McEntarfer on Friday got here after the report discovered the U.S. had added 73,000 jobs in July, in response to information from the BLS. The determine marked a slowdown from 147,000 jobs added within the earlier month.
President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he departs the White Home, Aug. 1, 2025 in Washington.
Win McNamee/Getty Photos
The unemployment fee ticked as much as 4.2%, retaining it at near-historic lows, in response to the report.
The report supplied new estimates for 2 earlier months, considerably dropping the federal government’s estimate of jobs added in Could and June. The contemporary information indicated a notable slowdown in hiring as Trump’s tariffs took maintain over latest months.
Trump criticized McEntarfer over the revisions, saying with out proof that the revisions instructed jobs statistics had been “manipulated.”
ABC Information has reached out to McEntarfer for a remark.
The Trump administration described the downward revisions as an unwelcome signal for the U.S. financial system however didn’t dispute the information. “Clearly, they are not what we need to see,” Stephen Miran, chair of the White Home Council of Financial Advisers, mentioned on Friday morning.
The Pals of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a corporation chaired by earlier BLS commissioners William Seashore and Erica L. Groshen, launched a press release on Friday, saying Trump’s determination to fireside McEntarfer “escalates the President’s unprecedented assaults on the independence and integrity of the federal statistical system.”
“The President seeks guilty somebody for unwelcome financial information. The Commissioner doesn’t decide what the numbers are however merely stories on what the information present,” the assertion learn.
Seashore was appointed by Trump throughout his first administration and Groshen was appointed by former President Barack Obama.
The group known as on Congress to “reply instantly, to research the components that led to Commissioner McEntarfer’s elimination, to strongly urge the Commissioner’s continued service, and be sure that the nonpartisan integrity of the place is retained.”
Requested by reporters as he departed the White Home on Friday in regards to the motive for McEntarfer’s firing, Trump mentioned he believes the financial system is doing properly and claimed the most recent jobs numbers have been “phony.”
“I consider the numbers have been phony similar to they have been earlier than the election, and there have been different occasions,” Trump mentioned, pointing to a earlier revision within the jobs numbers final yr that he claimed, with out proof, was an try to learn Democrats heading into the election. He mentioned this regardless of utilizing the numbers as a speaking level in his marketing campaign.
“So you understand what I did? I fired her. And you understand what? I did the correct factor,” Trump mentioned.
