Jobs data in spotlight as Trump fires official

WASHINGTON — The monthly jobs report is already closely watched on Wall Street and in Washington but has taken on a new importance after President Donald Trump on Friday fired the official who oversees it.

Trump claimed June's employment figures were "rigged" to make him and other Republicans "look bad". Yet he provided no evidence and even the official Trump had appointed in his first term to oversee the report, William Beach, condemned the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics appointed by former president Joe Biden.

The firing followed Friday's jobs report that showed hiring was weak in July and had come to nearly a standstill in May and June, right after Trump rolled out sweeping tariffs.

Economists and Wall Street investors have long considered the job figures reliable, with share prices and bond yields often reacting sharply when they are released. Yet Friday's revisions were unusually large, and the surveys used to compile the report are facing challenges from declining response rates, particularly since COVID, as fewer companies complete the surveys.

Many academics, statisticians and economists have warned for some time that declining budgets were straining the government's ability to gather economic data. There were several government commissions studying ways to improve things like survey response rates, but the Trump administration disbanded them earlier this year.

Heather Boushey, a top economic adviser in the Biden White House, noted that without Trump's firing of McEntarfer, there would be more focus on last week's data, which points to a slowing economy.

"We're having this conversation about made-up issues to distract us from what the data is showing," Boushey said. "Revisions of this magnitude in a negative direction may indicate bad things to come for the labor market."

Trump and his White House have a long track record of celebrating the jobs numbers — when they are good.

However, Trump focused his attack on the revisions to the May and June data, which on Friday were revised lower, with job gains in May reduced to 19,000 from 144,000, and for June to just 14,000 from 147,000. Every month's jobs data is revised in the following two months.

The monthly revisions occur because many companies that respond to the government's surveys send in their data late, or correct the figures they've already submitted. The proportion of companies sending in their data later has risen in the past decade.

The revisions to May and June's job totals, which reduced hiring by a total of 258,000, were the largest — outside recessions — since 1967, according to economists at Goldman Sachs.

Trump also repeated a largely inaccurate attack from the campaign about an annual revision last August, which reduced total employment in the US by 818,000, or about 0.5 percent.

Agencies via Xinhua