As of 1:35PM CT today, the President has fired the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, within 6 hours of the latest employment release. So what all of feared about the safety of the independence of our economic statistical agencies has come to pass. We might as well delegate the employment numbers to Kevin Hassett at the NEC.
From NBC:
President Donald Trump on Friday ordered the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hours after a stunning government report showed that hiring had slowed down significantly over the past three months.
Taking to Truth Social, he attacked Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the BLS. He claimed that the country’s jobs reports “are being produced by Biden appointee” and ordered his administration to terminate her.
Needless to say, his assertions that the numbers were manipulated are without merit.
With no hint of irony, he wrote:
“We need accurate Jobs Numbers,” … “She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”
At this rate, if a recession occurs within the next 3.5 years, we’ll not see a negative GDP print let alone employment print.
And if you thought this was unimportant to you, remember BLS calculates the CPI used for Social Security COLAs, as well as the headline CPI used to calculate TIPS yields. Oh, also the inflation adjustments to the marginal tax rate thresholds…
Joe Biden did, in fact, nominate Erika McEntarfer to run the BLS. Prior to that nomination, she had spent most of her career as a civil servant, at the BLS, Census and the CEA. She is not a political hack. She has the PhD and everything.
If I were to guess, I’d say she expected to be fired. Even non-political types in DC know what’s what.
For context, note that the economy’s bad response to the felon-in-chief’s policies comes at the same time that the felon and and Russia’s top provocateur are exchanging not-so-subtle threats of nuclear war, Israel continues its policy of extermination in Palestine, consumer loan delinquencies are at the highest rate in over 20 years, inflation is creeping up and mortgage rates remain high.
The felon may be trying to do the (mostly bad) things he said he’d do during his campaign, but he is failing in many of them, and even where he has succeeded, the effect is bad. Historians and the public both judged the felon to be among our worst presidents in his first term. Doesn’t seem to have improved the second time around.
William J. Wiatrowski is, for now, going to run BLS. He’s the Deputy Commissioner, and is also a long-time government employee. In fact, Wiatrowski acted as BLS Commissioner prior to McEntarfer’s confirmation. No PhD, but he has an MBA and an undergrad econ and art history degree. He is widely published.
So instead of replacing McEntarfer with a hack, the felon-in-chief has allowed a seasoned professional to step in. Of course, the threat is still obvious. I’m confident an art history major will uphold the high standards of the BLS.