Trump claimed without evidence on Truth Social that the commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, had “faked the Jobs Numbers” before the 2024 election in order to boost former Vice President Kamala Harris’s White House bid.
Trump cited labor statistics revisions during the Biden administration that boosted job numbers ahead of the election. The jobs report released Friday showed a significant downturn during Trump’s administration in May and June, indicating the U.S. added 258,000 fewer jobs over those months than had initially been reported.
The move was met with outrage from Democrats.
“That’s some weird Soviet s‑‑‑,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said. “Blaming the messenger? Nothing’s ever his fault.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) posted on social media that, “Instead of helping people get good jobs, Donald Trump just fired the statistician who reported bad jobs data that the wanna-be king doesn’t like.”
McEntarfer was nominated by Biden in 2023 and confirmed by the Senate in 2024 as the 16th commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is part of the Department of Labor.
She was confirmed in the Senate in a bipartisan 86-8 vote. Notably, Vice President J.D Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who were both senators at the time, voted in favor of her nomination.
The Hill’s Alex Gangitano has more here.
