President Donald Trump fired the chief labor statistician after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report showing that the economy added only 73,000 jobs in July.
The number comes the same day that Trump resumes his global tariffs. Hours later, Trump criticized Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, implying she could not be trusted because former President Joe Biden nominated her.
“We need accurate Jobs Numbers,” he posted. “I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”
The Senate confirmed McEntarfer last year with an 86-8 vote. JD Vance, then a senator from Ohio whom Trump nominated to be his running mate, was among those who voted to confirm her.
Pressed by reporters on his way to a weekend at his golf resort in New Jersey, Trump insisted it was his prerogative to oust the labor bean counter. "I believe the numbers were phony, just like they were before the election, and there were other times,” Trump said, while refusing to provide proof to back up his allegations about McEntarfer.
“So you know what I did? I fired her. And you know what? I did the right thing,” Trump insisted.
Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer said that deputy commissioner William Wiatrowski will serve as interim commissioner.
The report showed that the unemployment rate of 4.2 percent ticked up slightly. But even more damning, the bureau also downwardly revised the number of jobs added in May from 144,000 jobs to only 19,000 while it revised the number of jobs added in June from 147,000 to 14,000.
“In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad — 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,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Biden nominated McEntarfer in July 2023 and she was confirmed by the Senate in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 86-8 vote, with six members not voting, in January 2024.
The day before the jobs report came out Trump had announced a series of new tariffs after he had said that Friday would be the drop-dead date for them to resume.
The jobs report significantly underperformed expectations, as the ADP employment report showed that the economy added 104,000 jobs in July.
The health care sector saw the biggest number of job increases, accounting for 55,000 of the 73,000 jobs added, while social assistance jobs rose by 18,000.
Employment in the federal government declined by 12,000 as a result of Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency. But the jobs report counts employees on paid leave or receiving ongoing severance pay as currently employed.
Major sectors of the economy that Trump has prioritized during his presidency such as mining, oil and gas extraction; manufacturing and construction all stayed roughly the same.
Hourly earnings also rose slightly by about 0.3 percent in July and by 3.9 percent in the last 12 months.
The stock market reacted viscerally to the poor jobs report, with futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping by 391 points and futures the S&P 500 dropping by 65 points before the opening bell.
The number is the latest example of spotty economic data. Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve elected to keep interest rates the same and the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that while GDP grew 3 percent, imports decreased while Trump put in place a pause on his “Liberaton Day” tariffs.
Trump also repeated his criticisms of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom Trump nominated during his first presidency, for failing to lower interest rates.
“The Economy is BOOMING under “TRUMP” despite a Fed that also plays games, this time with Interest Rates, where they lowered them twice, and substantially, just before the Presidential Election, I assume in the hopes of getting ‘Kamala’ elected,” Trump said. “How did that work out? Jerome “Too Late” Powell should also be put ‘out to pasture.’”
Powell has taken a largely wait-and-see approach to the effects of tariffs, given that the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate to keep unemployment and inflation low. During his press conference on Wednesday, Powell said that inflation remained high even without the pressure from tariffs.
But the markets received another shock when Adriana Kugler, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, announced her resignation on Friday effective next week. Kugler’s term expires in January. But Trump will now have an opportunity to make another significant change at the central bank.
In the days leading up to Friday, Trump had announced a series of deals with various countries and trading blocs, including the European Union, Japan and South Korea.
But Trump also raised the tariff rate with Canada from 25 percent to 35 percent and the rate for Brazil to 50 percent despite the fact that Brazil has a trade surplus.
At the same time, Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs with Mexico as he and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum continue negotiations.
Trump largely won re-election because Americans wished to return to the economy during his first tenure in the White House before the Covid-19 pandemic battered employment and the aftermath caused a supply shock that drove up inflation.
But polling continues to show Americans dissatisfied with the state of the economy.
