after the BLS reported<\/a> that the US economy added just 73,000 jobs in July and the monthly totals for May and June were revised down by a combined 258,000 jobs. Trump claimed, without evidence, that the disappointing jobs report had been \u201crigged.\u201d\n <\/p>\n\n Her lecture at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, her alma mater, comes as questions swirl about the integrity of government data as Trump has sought greater control of the agency and tariffs appear to be hurting the economy.\n <\/p>\n
\n Speaking to a crowd of fellow alumni, students, professors and reporters, McEntarfer said Tuesday that she only learned of her firing when a reporter reached out to her for comment following a Trump post on Truth Social announcing her termination. She didn\u2019t believe it at first, she said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Then she noticed an earlier email from the White House Presidential Personnel Office stating only the following:\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cDr. McEntarfer: On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position at the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cFiring your chief statistician is a dangerous step,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s an attack on the independence of an institution arguably as important as the Federal Reserve for economic stability. It has serious economic consequences, but that they would do this with no warning \u2014 it made no sense.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cMessing with economic data is like messing with the traffic lights and turning the sensors off. Cars don\u2019t know where to go, traffic backs up at intersections,\u201d she said, a nod to the concerns many economists have raised since her firing.\n <\/p>\n
\n Before her firing, McEntarfer\u2019s biggest concern with the monthly jobs reports and other economic reports the BLS publishes was funding shortfalls that made it harder to conduct surveys that inform the data, she said. That\u2019s been especially true as response rates to the agency\u2019s surveys have fallen. But that has not impacted the accuracy of the data, she said.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cBut after the events of the last six weeks, I\u2019m afraid we have to fear for the (data) dependence of the agencies themselves.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Before the release of any jobs report during her time at the BLS, McEntarfer and her team would brief members of the White House a day before the data is made public.\n <\/p>\n
\n McEntarfer said she \u201cdid not get the sense\u201d that anything was wrong when briefing the White House last month. She fielded what she considers \u201cnormal\u201d questions when economists are trying to make sense of new data, she said.\n <\/p>\n
\n She acknowledged that the downward jobs revisions from prior months\u2019 employment reports, which were included in the July jobs report, were unusually large. This prompted her to devote more time during the briefing to explain why that was the case, she said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Such revisions, however, are considered a feature and not a bug of economic data, which is frequently revised \u2013 especially as more comprehensive information becomes readily available \u2013 to provide a clearer, more accurate picture of the dynamics in play.\n <\/p>\n
\n On Tuesday, McEntarfer said that late-responding firms were the principal reason for the negative revision that preceded her firing. That dynamic was explained by McEntarfer and her staff during their monthly pre-jobs report briefing to the White House.\n <\/p>\n
\n She told White House economists that revisions as large as the May and June jobs data tend to occur \u201cwhen the economy slows,\u201d she said. During the briefing, White House officials asked her: Was the skew disproportionately among small firms, and when was the last time this happened?\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt was a pretty broad-based, negative skew,\u201d she said, noting that the last time this happened was in the early months of the pandemic. Businesses were likely responding late to the survey \u201cbecause they\u2019re just too busy trying to stay alive.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n This story has been updated with additional context and developments.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link Annandale-on-Hudson, New York \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 When the July jobs report was first released on August…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":232539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,79,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-232538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115216806229651413","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}