No Evidence for Trump’s Claims of ‘Rigged’ Job Numbers
At 8:30 a.m. on Aug. 1, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly employment numbers, which showed underwhelming job growth for July – an additional 73,000 jobs – and a downward revision to the prior two months of 258,000 jobs. By 2:09 p.m., President Donald Trump fired the BLS commissioner, announcing it in a Truth Social post.
BLS produces statistical data on employment, wages, inflation and more, and its work has long been viewed as nonpartisan. The government, companies – and yes, journalists – rely on the BLS figures. We cite them constantly in reporting on economic indicators.
Trump justified the firing of the BLS commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, by saying the job numbers were “phony” or “rigged” and that McEntarfer had “faked” other job figures to help Democrats. As FactCheck.org Director Lori Robertson writes, there’s no evidence the commissioner, or others at BLS, manipulated the data, and Trump hasn’t provided any.
Also, the president’s timeline on past BLS announcements supposedly attempting to aid Democrats in the 2024 election is simply wrong.
Lori spoke with Kathy Utgoff, a former BLS commissioner who was appointed by President George W. Bush. Utgoff said that commissioners “can’t rig the numbers. … The commissioner has no ability to change the numbers that come out of computers at the last minute.” About the only thing a commissioner can do is adjust the wording in the press release, and the goal is to “try to be boring” with that language, Utgoff said.
The administration has pointed to revisions that BLS has made to job numbers under McEntarfer’s leadership. But that’s not evidence of any manipulation.
“Revisions are not mistakes, they are improvements,” Utgoff said.
McEntarfer was appointed by former President Joe Biden – but confirmed in a bipartisan 86-8 Senate vote.
Trump claimed that “days before the election” McEntarfer issued “beautiful numbers” to aid Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, and then after the election “on the 15th of November or thereabouts, they had an 8 or 900,000 overstatement, reduction.” That’s not what happened at all.
Instead, days before the election, the BLS jobs announcement showed weak growth in October. And that 800,000 downward revision was announced in late August, well before the election. It was a preliminary estimate and part of a routine annual adjustment by BLS, using more comprehensive data.
At the time, Trump claimed it was a “lie” and that “the Harris/Biden administration has been caught fraudulently manipulating job statistics.” There was no evidence for such claims then, either.
Read our full story for more: “No Evidence for Trump’s Claims of ‘Rigged’ or ‘Phony’ Job Numbers.”
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