Trump Should Have Fired McEntarfer Long Ago

The corporate news media greeted the lackluster jobs report that dropped on August 1 with unabated glee, and savored President Trump’s complaints concerning its accuracy. They were less pleased, however, when he fired Commissioner of Labor Statistics Erika McEntarfer. The coverage of her termination was predictable. CNN, for example, went with the following headline: “Trump fires a senior official over jobs numbers.” In reality, McEntarfer’s termination was long overdue. She was a Biden appointee whose tenure at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been characterized by disarray.

Her leadership of the BLS involved implausibly robust job growth estimates during former President Biden’s final year in office and recurring technical issues. The Washington Post reluctantly ran this story: “The Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wednesday that a technical issue caused delays last week in the scheduled release of jobs data … The episode is at least the third in a series of missteps this year.” McEntarfer’s tenure was also plagued with huge downward revisions in reported job gains. As the New York Times reported in August of 2024: