Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
—
Erika McEntarfer, former commissioner at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is talking publicly for the first time since President Donald Trump fired her last month after a disappointing jobs report he claimed with out proof had been “rigged.”
“August 1 was like any other first Friday of the month when the job numbers come out, and my quiet and usually obscure little corner the government goes about its business of telling political leaders what these data tell us about the state of the economy,” she stated.
“Except, by the end of that day, I had been very publicly fired by the president of the United States and was on my way to becoming a household name. It was quite a day, to say the least.”
McEntarfer was fired after the BLS reported that the US economy added simply 73,000 jobs in July, and the month-to-month totals for May and June have been revised down by a mixed 258,000 jobs.
She is talking at an occasion hosted by the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. The lecture, titled “The Importance of Official Data in Assessing Economic Conditions,” comes as questions swirl about the integrity of presidency knowledge shifting ahead, as Trump and members of his administration have sought to realize higher management of the company and the knowledge it publishes.
McEntarfer stated she solely discovered of her firing when a reporter reached out to her for remark following a Trump publish on Truth Social saying her termination. She didn’t consider it at first, she stated.
“Firing your chief statistician is a dangerous step, thus an attack on the independence of that institution, arguably as important as the Federal Reserve for economic stability. It has serious economic consequences, but that they would do this with no warning — it made no sense.”
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