Trump Fires US Labor Official Claiming She “Rigged” Lackluster Jobs Report

It only took a few hours for President Donald Trump to call for the firing of a top Bureau of Labor Statistics official after a weaker-than-expected jobs report called into question the strength of his administration’s economic policies.

Early Friday, the labor department released a report finding that the economy added 73,000 jobs last month, a number that was lower than anticipated. The unemployment rate also rose by 0.1 percentage point from the previous month, from 4.1% to 4.2%, and job gains from the last two months were revised down by a total of 258,000. While revisions to prior months’ numbers are normal, this high of a decrease came as a surprise.

Trump’s fury over the somber jobs report fell squarely on Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of BLS.

Hours after the latest stats were released, the president, in a long-winded Truth Social post filled with evidence-less claims of a coordinated conspiracy against him, called for Dr. McEntarfer’s firing. Appointed by president Joe Biden, McEntarfer was confirmed to the role by the Senate on a bipartisan basis in 2024. She handily won that vote, with 86 in favor and only eight opposed. Now-Vice President JD Vance was among the yea votes.

In the post, Trump accused McEntarfer of being incompetent and of faking the numbers for “political purposes.”

“I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY,” the president wrote on his social media platform. “She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.” An hour later, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the labor secretary, echoed Trump on X, saying, “I support the President’s decision.” While the department searches for a “replacement,” she wrote, Deputy Commissioner William Wiatrowski will serve as acting commissioner.

Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer standing behind President Trump on April 23, 2025. She once again stood behind Trump on Friday after he called for a top labor official to be fired.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“Thanks to President Trump, our economy is BOOMING,” Secretary Chavez-DeRemer wrote, departing from the BLS report, “and with the help of fair trade deals and the One Big, Beautiful Bill, American workers will prosper!”

Later on Friday, Trump took a victory lap, telling reporters he “did the right thing.”

As The New York Times reports, “Trump and his top aides have made a habit of attacking government agencies, researchers and watchdogs when they have produced findings that the president does not like.” This recurring cycle, the Times’ Ben Casselman and Tony Romm wrote Friday, “has led to concerns that Mr. Trump could seek to interfere with the operations” of the BLS and other statistical agencies, “particularly if the economy begins to take a turn for the worse.”

McEntarfer was not immediately available to comment to the Times.

The move drew swift and intense backlash from William Beach, who led the bureau during Trump’s first term.

“This could set a precedent where bad news on many different fronts is a reason for dismissing a person,” he said in the Times. Beach also served under Biden and said he never felt pressure to manipulate the data under either president, adding that even if there were pressure, there is “no way” the commissioner could interfere in the revisions process. A process, he explained, that is conducted by career employees.

Whether or not the Trump administration confirms the latest BLS data, Americans are still feeling a strain on their wallet.

According to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s Investor Education Foundation’s new National Financial Capability Study, there’s been a 10 percentage point decrease over the past three years in the number of adults saying that they find it easy to cover their expenses and pay their bills. And in a recent poll conducted by Morning Consult for the Century Foundation, six out of ten Americans hold the Trump administration responsible for driving up their cost of living. The poll asked 2,007 Americans how they are managing the high cost of living in the US economy, who they think is to blame, and what the solutions are.

Protesters rally against Trump on International Workers’ Day on May 1 in 2016.

MARK RALSTON/Getty Images

In Trump’s attack on the recent data release, he paid particular attention to the 258,000 jobs that were removed from previous job reports. But, revision in and of itself is a normal part of releasing data on employment, as the department continues to incorporate data that wasn’t initially available or to reflect information from more authoritative sources. Trump’s tone about jobs data and shifting numbers depends greatly on how the reporting makes his administration’s policies look.

The Associated Press on Friday pointed out this pattern, noting that during his 2016 campaign, he “often attacked the jobs figures as they showed the unemployment rate steadily declining while [Barack] Obama was still president, only to immediately switch to praising the data once he was in office, as steady job gains continued.”

High-profile Democrats were also quick to denounce the move.

“What does a bad leader do when they get bad news?” Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer of New York asked in a Friday speech. “Shoot the messenger.” “Instead of helping people get good jobs, Donald Trump just fired the statistician who reported bad jobs data that the wanna-be king doesn’t like,” Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren wrote on X. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that oversees the labor department, decried the decision on X: “This is what authoritarians do.”

That a Senate-approved, bipartisan official could be out of a job hours after doing something that reflected poorly on the current administration raises concerns that Americans may not receive accurate information, should that data diverge from what powerful people in Washington want to present. This concern could lead to a crisis of trust amongst people across the nation, according to economic experts.

“If you want people to stop trusting the numbers coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” Martha Gimbel, the executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale, who served in the White House under Biden, began, “firing the person who is confirmed by the Senate to make sure those numbers are trustworthy is a real good way to do it.”

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