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21.55 BST
Trump’s
first-term labor statistics chief denounces ‘groundless firing’ of his
successor
Bill Beach,
a former Heritage foundation economist who was picked by Donald Trump in 2018
to oversee labor statistics, denounced on Friday what he called the “totally
groundless firing of Dr Erika McEntarfer, my successor as Commissioner of Labor
Statistics at BLS”.
Beach added
that Trump’s order to remove the bearer of bad news on jobs “sets a dangerous
precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau”.
He also
co-signed a statement with Erica Groshen, who served as the commissioner before
him, from 2013 to 2017, which began:
Today,
President Trump called into question the integrity of the Employment Situation
report that the BLS released this morning. He accused BLS Commissioner Erika
McEntarfer of deliberately reporting false numbers to reflect poorly on this
administration. This baseless, damaging claim undermines the valuable work and
dedication of BLS staff who produce the reports each month. This escalates the
President’s unprecedented attacks on the independence and integrity of the
federal statistical system.
The
President seeks to blame someone for unwelcome economic news. The Commissioner
does not determine what the numbers are but simply reports on what the data
show. The process of obtaining the numbers is decentralized by design to avoid
opportunities for interference. The BLS uses the same proven, transparent,
reliable process to produce estimates every month. Every month, BLS revises the
prior two months’ employment estimates to reflect slower-arriving,
more-accurate information.
This
rationale for firing Dr McEntarfer is without merit and undermines the
credibility of federal economic statistics that are a cornerstone of
intelligent economic decision-making by businesses, families, and policymakers.
US official statistics are the gold standard globally. When leaders of other
nations have politicized economic data, it has destroyed public trust in all
official statistics and in government science.
Other
experts and elected officials were equally scathing in their response to
Trump’s move.
“This
will make it difficult to trust government sources on economic and financial
data,” Rohit Chopra, the former director of the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau, wrote. “Many businesses and investors use these data sets to determine
where they want to launch or grow, so this will have real costs.”
“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,” Elizabeth Warren,
the Massachusetts senator and bankruptcy law expert, posted.
“No.
Mr. President,” Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, wrote. “In America, you do
not fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for releasing a jobs report
that you don’t like. That’s what authoritarians do. We need serious economists
in these positions, not hacks who will only tell you what you want to hear.”
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