Overview

• Trump fired Erika McEntarfer hours after the BLS reported a sharp slowdown in July hiring and revised May and June payrolls down by a combined 258,000 jobs.
• The White House argued McEntarfer’s past data corrections had inflated job figures and blamed those errors for enabling prolonged high interest rates.
• Deputy commissioner William Wiatrowski was immediately named acting head while the administration seeks a permanent replacement.
• A bipartisan group of former BLS chiefs condemned the dismissal as groundless, emphasizing that the commissioner reports data rather than creates it.
• Economists cautioned that replacing a nonpartisan leader over undesirable statistics could undermine confidence in U.S. economic reporting and heighten pressure on the Federal Reserve.