President Donald Trump on Friday fired Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, just hours after the agency released a jobs report showing U.S. labor-market expansion had nearly stalled. The surprising move came amid mounting criticism from Trump over the accuracy of labor data and came via a Truth Social post that also attacked Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
Trump claimed McEntarfer, a political appointee from the Biden administration, had manipulated job figures to improve the electoral prospects of Vice President Kamala Harris. “I was just informed that our Country’s ‘Jobs Numbers’ are being produced by a Biden Appointee… who faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election,” he wrote. Trump added that he instructed his team to remove her immediately and replace her with someone “much more competent and qualified.”
A BLS spokesperson confirmed to CNBC that McEntarfer had been terminated and that Deputy Commissioner William Wiatrowski would serve as acting head. Since the BLS is part of the Department of Labor—led by Trump appointee Lori Chavez-DeRemer—the move puts the agency squarely under White House control.
The dismissal followed data showing only 73,000 nonfarm jobs added in July—a figure well below forecasts. Worse, revisions to May and June combined slashed employment gains by 258,000, leaving a three-month total of just 35,000 jobs. That represented the largest two-month downward adjustment since April 2020, during the early pandemic.
Trump and other congressional Republicans have long criticized BLS for large monthly revisions. He cited a prior adjustment that removed 818,000 jobs from the previous year’s tally. In his budget proposal this year, Trump pushed to cut the bureau’s workforce by 8%, raising concerns over its ability to track employment, consumer prices, and other economic indicators accurately.
In his social media posts, Trump emphasized that labor statistics must be honest and free of political skewing. He wrote that the jobs report showed a shocking slowdown and criticized the prior months’ revisions, which he said repeatedly went downward. Earlier, the White House promoted July as part of a “June Boom” after positive initial numbers.
Markets reacted swiftly: the Dow fell more than 500 points, the Nasdaq dropped over 2%, and Treasury yields declined. Peter Mallouk, president and CIO at Creative Planning, expressed disbelief, saying Trump’s post seemed like satire at first. “This is not healthy,” he added, warning that firing a long-serving civil servant for data one dislikes threatens institutional trust.
William Beach, Trump’s nominee to lead BLS in 2017 and McEntarfer’s immediate predecessor, issued a sharp rebuke. On X, he called her firing “totally groundless” and warned it undermined the bureau’s mission. In a joint statement with former commissioners, he criticized the move as an attack on the statistical system’s independence.
Trump also attacked Fed Chair Powell that day. He accused the Fed of lowering rates before the 2024 election to benefit Democrats and suggested Powell should be “put out to pasture.” Despite maintaining the benchmark interest rate unchanged for months, futures traders now anticipate a possible cut in September following the weak jobs data.
With job growth slowing sharply through late spring and summer amid tariffs and economic uncertainty, public and investor confidence is under strain. Trump’s firing of McEntarfer signals a pivot toward direct control over data messaging—a move experts warn could further erode trust in U.S. economic reporting.
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