Trump economic adviser defends firing of labor official after soft jobs report

President Donald Trump’s longtime economic adviser on Sunday defended the president’s decision to fire the top labor official responsible for compiling jobs numbers, but did not provide evidence to support claims that the latest figures were rigged in a revised report that revealed a labor market that was weaker than anticipated.

Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday, saying she had “faked” employment data in a partisan move. The latest jobs report downgraded hiring numbers for May and June.

When pressed for proof to support Trump’s claim Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said, “The revisions are the hard evidence.”

“If I was running the BLS, and I had a number that was a huge, politically important revision … then I would have a really long report explaining what happened, and we didn’t get that,” Hassett continued, adding that he had “never seen revisions like this.”

Where Hassett sees evidence of impropriety, Trump’s former Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, William Beach, sees revisions that resulted from McEntarfer “trying to do a better job, getting more information.”

In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Beach rejected the argument that McEntarfer somehow manipulated the data for political purposes, saying that “by the time the commissioner sees the numbers, they’re all prepared. They’re locked into the computer system.”

McEntarfer has not commented publicly on her firing. It comes amid broader concerns from policymakers and economic analysts about increasingly shaky government economic data over issues that, in many cases, predate her tenure leading the bureau. Falling response rates to government surveys, coupled with pandemic-driven seasonal quirks and long-standing budget strains, have made it harder to collect and analyze reliable data, officials have said. Agencies responsible for the data have also shed staff through early retirements, deferred resignations and normal attrition.

Beach said that he will still trust the jobs numbers moving forward, but that the attack by Trump undermines the public’s trust in the bureau.

“I don’t think there’s any grounds at all for this firing,” he continued. “And it really hurts the statistical system. … This is damaging.”

Polls suggest the public has more trust in the accuracy of federal statistics, such as the unemployment rate, than in the federal government overall. A national poll of about 1,000 adults conducted by survey research firm SSRS in June found that roughly 70% had at least some confidence in federal statistics, compared with 51% who said the same about the federal government overall.

Former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers called Trump’s claim that the BLS numbers were manipulated for political purposes “a preposterous charge,” telling ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that McEntarfer’s firing was “way beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever did.”

“These numbers are put together by teams of literally hundreds of people following detailed procedures that are in manuals. There’s no conceivable way that the head of the BLS could have manipulated this number,” said Summers, who led the Treasury Department under Bill Clinton.

Hassett also raised concerns Sunday about data quality — questioning whether the system has recovered from the chaos of economic data collection during the COVID pandemic. He argued that large revisions during the pandemic were happening “all the time, all over the place,” which was understandable given fluctuations in the job market. But after the pandemic, the large revisions have continued, he said.

“Right now, we’ve got BLS numbers that aren’t really a lot better than they were during COVID, and we need to understand why. I think the president’s right to call for new leadership,” Hassett told “Fox News Sunday.”

The Trump administration’s push to overhaul major benchmarks it calls flawed predates Friday’s jobs report. In March, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called for a change in the way economic growth is measured, though that idea has yet to move forward.

Over the past decade, as a result of budget constraints, the BLS has scaled back key activities such as in-person visits, follow-ups, field training and travel — steps that are essential for data quality. It has said it is surveying fewer outlets for the consumer price index — the most widely used benchmark for inflation — because of staffing shortages in certain cities, and that it is discontinuing the calculation and publishing of wholesale pricing data on hundreds of products in the producer price index.

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• Andrew Ackerman, Kasha Patel and Joanna Slater contributed.