The top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee called President Donald Trump’s firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday “the act of somebody who is soft, weak and afraid to own up to the reality of the damage his chaos is inflicting on our economy.”
“Bottom line, Trump wants to cook the books,” said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon in a statement shortly after Trump fired McEntarfer on the heels of a weaker-than-expected jobs report by the BLS.
“Trump can’t get through a single day without making some catastrophic decision that undermines confidence in the U.S. economy, and although the Bureau of Labor Statistics might sound obscure to people outside Washington, Trump’s interference with jobs data is a nightmare scenario that will do long-lasting harm,” Wyden said.
“It’s long past time for Senate Republicans to find the courage to stand up to this dictatorial behavior, and there is no way the Senate can accept some Trump lackey as the head of BLS,” the senator said.
Wyden’s criticism was echoed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who said Trump was acting like a dictator and a “bad leader” who “shoots the messenger” after hearing bad news about the economy.
“Well, Donald Trump, firing her isn’t going to relieve the chaos that you created with your ramshackle tariff regime,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
Trump on Friday told reporters that he fired McEntarfer because “I think her numbers are wrong.”
“I’ve had issues with the numbers for a long time,” Trump said. “I’ve always had problems with these numbers.”
Trump said BLS had issued positive job number reports shortly before the 2024 presidential election, when he faced incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris, and then sharply revised the numbers downward after he won the election.
Dr. Erika McEntarfer, Commissioner of Labor Statistics
Source: Bureau of Labor
The White House separately said that since the Covid-19 pandemic there have been a series of sharp revisions in BLS jobs data after individual reports were released, and pointed to that as a reason for McEntarfer’s termination. The White House called Entarfer incompetent, and said she was being fired for the same reason a business would terminate someone for incompetency.
William Beach, who preceded McEntarfer as BLS commissioner, in a tweet called her termination “totally groundless” and said it “sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau.”
Trump in a Truth Social post Friday said, “In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad — Just like when they had three great days around the 2024 Presidential Election, and then, those numbers were “taken away” on November 15, 2024, right after the Election, when the Jobs Numbers were massively revised DOWNWARD, making a correction of over 818,000 Jobs — A TOTAL SCAM.”
Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a post on X that BLS Deputy Commissioner William Wiatrowski will serve as Acting Commissioner” of the BLS until a permanent replacement is installed.