August 3, 2025 | 01:08 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - US President Donald Trump has fired the Director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Erika McEntarfer, just hours after the agency reported that job growth in the United States had slowed to almost a standstill on Friday, August 1, 2025. "We need accurate job figures. I have instructed the team to immediately dismiss this Biden political appointee," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
This surprising decision comes after the BLS reported that there was only an addition of 73,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in July, a figure below market expectations.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump accused Erika McEntarfer of being a political official who manipulated job data. "I have just been informed that the job figures for the United States were created by Biden's appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, BLS Commissioner, who falsified job figures before the election to try to boost Kamala (Harris)'s chances of winning," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
"We need accurate job figures. I have instructed my team to immediately dismiss this Biden political appointee. She will be replaced by someone far more competent and qualified," he was quoted as saying by CNBC.
A spokesperson for the bureau admitted the dismissal of Erika McEntarfer and her position will be filled by her deputy, William.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States operates under the Department of Labor. The head of the Department of Labor is Lori Chavez-DeRemer, appointed by Trump.
Last Friday, the BLS reported that there was only an addition of 73,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in July, below market expectations. Additionally, the BLS revised sharply downward job gains from two months earlier, slashing a total of 258,000 from previous data. Over three months, job growth rate was only 35,000. This is the largest two-month downward revision since April 2020, the onset of the Covid crisis.
Trump and Republican congress members have repeatedly criticized the BLS for years over the data it collects. Trump noted that last year, the BLS also announced a major revision that reduced the increase in wages for the 12 months before March 2024 by 818,000.
Trump had previously criticized the BLS over job data and revisions published. Speaking to reporters on Friday night, he said he had always had problems with these figures.
In 2016, during his first presidential campaign, Trump claimed that the unemployment rate was much higher than that revealed by the BLS. In 2024, he accused the administration of former President Joe Biden of orchestrating efforts to cover up, after the BLS reported that they had counted more than 818,000 jobs in the previous 12 months.
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