President Trump on Monday continued to slam Erika McEntarfer, the former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics who he fired, claiming she had "rigged" a poor job numbers report. No evidence has been provided to support that claim. Nancy Cordes reports.

Washington

President Trump has fired Erika McEntarfer, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), after the release of a jobs report showing lower-than-expected job growth and downward revisions to previous months' figures. Trump alleged that the job numbers were manipulated to harm Republicans, but his aides have not provided evidence to support these accusations. 

Experts, including a former BLS commissioner, explained that the bureau regularly revises job numbers as more data becomes available, and these procedures are set in advance, making manipulation highly unlikely. Historical data shows that such revisions occurred under both the Biden and Trump administrations, with no clear partisan pattern.

No evidence from White House that revised job numbers were "rigged"

It's a scam, in my opinion. President Trump is still lashing out at labor economist Erika McEntarfer, who until Friday led the small but crucial Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, you know what I did? I fired her. Right. And you know what? I did the right thing. He fired her after the Bureau's monthly jobs report showed the U.S. economy added an underwhelming 73,000 jobs in July. At the same time, the Bureau dramatically revised its jobs numbers from May and June downward, making them the smallest months for job growth since 2020. Today, Trump called them fake political numbers concocted to hurt Republicans, an explosive accusation that his aides have yet to back up. I think it's a massive failure of our data agencies to be making willy-nilly changes that are difficult to understand and often have apparently partisan patterns. The Bureau of Labor Statistics revises past jobs reports every month as more data comes in. In the final year of President Biden's terms, jobs numbers were later revised downward for eight out of the 12 months. In the final year of Trump's first term, they were revised up eight times. That's just part of the process of ensuring that the numbers that we end up with are as accurate as possible. Catherine Abraham served as BLS commissioner under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. I spoke to her remotely today. There's no way that I could have rigged the numbers, even if I'd wanted to. The numbers are produced using procedures that are specified in advance. So what the president is accusing her of is something that it would be almost impossible to do. Yes, that's a fair statement. One of Trump's central accusations is that McIntyre for inflated Biden's job creation numbers to make them look better before last year's election. But Maurice, that is incorrect. The bureau actually scaled back Biden's numbers repeatedly in the months just prior to election day in 2024. Okay. Nancy Cordes at the White House.

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