“President Trump is undermining the integrity of the information that policymakers, businesses, households, and investors use to make important decisions that affect the welfare of the nation,” Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a commentary.
He said it was “imperative” that people understand that U.S. economic stats are unbiased.
“By casting doubt on that, the President is damaging the United States,” he added after Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) commissioner.
Trump said on Friday that the latest employment report, which showed a modest 73,000 jobs added in July and revised numbers down for May and June by a whopping 258,000 jobs, was “manipulated for political purposes.”
Trump offered no evidence to back up his conclusion, and a number of observers said it would be difficult for someone to manipulate the data given the number of people who provide information for the reports.
Employment data from the BLS is bedrock-level data for businesses and economists. It’s put together from surveys of firms around the country and is used in myriad different models and forecasts, both public and private.
Because it’s so fundamental, economists say that political attacks on it are a lot more serious than those Trump has aimed at other agencies – even the Federal Reserve.
“This is much more dangerous than the pressure on the Fed,” Cato Institute research fellow Jai Kedia told The Hill on Monday. “The labor and inflation statistics are the bedrock of every other federal institution that’s trying to work on the economy.”
The Hill’s Tobias Burns has more here.
