A few hours after weaker-than-expected jobs statistics fueled more concerns about his tariff policies, US President Donald Trump sacked the head of one of the country’s most significant economic organizations.
Trump said that Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), had “RIGGED” employment statistics “to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad” on social media.
Trump was accused of politicizing economic data after the White House took this unusual action. Chuck Schumer, the leading Democrat in the Senate, called the president “a bad leader” who “shoots the messenger” for weak numbers.
Trump, a Republican, continued to push his intentions to increase import duties on items from across the world, which shook US financial markets on Friday. The BLS then revealed data indicating that US firms created only 73,000 new jobs in July, much short of the 109,000 new jobs that were predicted.
Additionally, the government reported 250,000 fewer jobs in May and June than initially estimated, reversing the gain in employment. Aside with the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the worst decline in employment data since 1979.
However, it is fairly uncommon for the BLS to update employment statistics as new information becomes available. Statistics for the 12 months spanning 2023–4 were retroactively corrected downward by 818,000 jobs under Joe Biden’s presidency.
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