Trump undermines jobs data as White House defends firing of BLS chief

President Donald Trump and one of his top economic advisors on Monday stoked baseless conspiracies about federal jobs data, suggesting without evidence that Friday’s weaker-than-expected employment report had been “rigged” by federal workers bent on sabotaging the president.

“All over the U.S. government, there have been people who have been resisting Trump everywhere they can,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Monday on CNBC.

Trump, meanwhile, claimed on social media that the report, which painted a dour picture of the economy, was “RIGGED” and the previous months’ revisions had been “CONCOCTED in order to make a great Republican Success look less stellar!!!”

The only way to protect the integrity of economic data, said Hassett, is to replace the economists and statisticians who lead the agencies that collect data.

“To make sure that the data are as transparent and as reliable as possible, we’re going to get highly qualified people in there that have a fresh start and a fresh set of eyes on the problem,” said Hassett.

Trump abruptly fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday.

Monday’s comments from Trump and Hassett were the latest effort by the White House to criticize the labor statistic bureau’s work in order to retroactively justify McEntarfer’s firing.

But they also went a step further, planting the idea that any government economic data which does not fit neatly into Trump’s political narrative must, by definition, be false and manipulated by partisan federal employees.

When the monthly jobs report from BLS is good news for the White House, Trump is quick to claim credit for the growth and point to the BLS-supplied figures as proof that his economic plans are working.

“GREAT JOB NUMBERS, FAR BETTER THAN EXPECTED. IT’S ALREADY WORKING. HANG TOUGH, WE CAN’T LOSE!!!” Trump wrote on social media this spring after job growth in March came in better than expected.

Fast forward a few months, and Trump and his top aides now contend that the BLS data cannot be trusted, and the downward revisions to the last two months’ jobs reports were phony.

It’s the same argument Trump used to try to undermine Americans’ trust in the voting process after he lost the 2020 presidential election.

In his Monday post, Trump drew a straight line between the jobs report and the voting process.

“Last weeks Job’s Report was RIGGED, just like the numbers prior to the Presidential Election were Rigged,” Trump wrote.

There is no evidence, however, that the jobs report data was manipulated, and revisions in the data are common. The reports typically become more accurate in the months after an initial report is filed, as more data flows in from business that report their hiring and firing numbers..

“The commissioner doesn’t do anything to collect the numbers,” former BLS chief William Beach, who was appointed by Trump, said Sunday on CNN as he slammed the decision to fire McEntarfer.

“The commissioner doesn’t see the numbers for — until Wednesday before they’re published,” he said.