The BLS Report

Ava Cai

August 1, 2025

“In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad…A TOTAL SCAM,” said Trump in his Truth Social post on Friday at noon. This post from the president is a response to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly report, which reflected that the US economy performed far below expectations—only 73,000 jobs were added in July, and a downward revision reflected the largest movement since April 2020. Convinced that Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, had made a “mistake” with the revisions for “political purposes,” President Trump fired the commissioner closely following the report. This is not the first time that President Trump and congressional Republicans have had issues with the BLS— previously, President Trump accused McEntarfer of changing job statistics before the 2024 presidential election in favor of former Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign. 

However, President Trump’s administration also has a history of siding with the BLS data when it's advantageous to them. In the president’s first term, Sean Spicer, the former White House Press Secretary, praised the strong March 2017 jobs statistics issued by the BLS, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt recently applauded four consecutive BLS labor reports for rising above the standard.  

This month's jobs report was released right before a steep tumble in the stock market, as investors closely monitored signs of a weakening economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 1.23 percent, the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.24 percent, and the S&P 500 decreased by 1.60 percent—all three indices are facing some of their biggest declines since the first half of the year. 

Trump’s actions to fire the chief of the Labor Statistics sparked immediate outrage among many economists and politicians. Peter Mallouk, the president and chief investment officer of Creative Planning, responds to Trump’s post on Truth Social: “This is not healthy…We can’t have a set of numbers come out and fire somebody that served under numerous administrations in various roles because you don’t like the numbers.” William Beach, McEntarfer’s immediate predecessor at BLS, also responded to his successor’s firing by criticizing President Trump, saying, “This escalates the President’s unprecedented attacks on the independence and integrity of the federal statistical system.” 

For the time being, Deputy Commissioner William Wiatrowski will take McEntarfer’s position as Acting Commissioner.