Trump’s Attack On Truth At The BLS

Written By Leeja Miller

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Transcript:

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a revision to previous jobs numbers, and it looked pretty bad. Instead of 139,000 jobs added in May, the Bureau said actually just 19,000 were added. And instead of 147,000 jobs in June, actually only 14,000 jobs were added. On top of that, there was virtually zero growth in the manufacturing sector, despite Trump’s promises that his tariffs would bring back manufacturing to the US. The number of jobs added each month is a steadfast indicator of the health of the economy, and that jobs data is used by everyone from the President to the Federal Reserve Chair to small and large businesses to gauge how the economy is doing and plan for the future. And with numbers that abysmal, there is an indication that the economy is heading in the wrong direction under Trump’s second term. But that, of course, looks bad for Trump. And what do you do when you’re a wannabe dictator and a toddler who can’t take accountability for their actions? You lash out at the person responsible for calling you out. And if you’ve got authoritarian inclinations, you do everything you can to hide the truth by undercutting the truthtellers. That’s what happened when Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in retaliation for these abysmal numbers, saying the commissioner, Erika McEnterfer, had falsified the revisions in a political vendetta against the President. He of course has no evidence to support his accusations, other than the fact that it makes him look bad. And anything that makes him look bad must be a political ploy, it must mean they are once again weaponizing the administrative state against him. That’s the only explanation, because everything he does is correct and actually the economy is booming, according to him. Today we’re discussing what this all means, why the Bureau of Labor Statistics matters, and how Trump is undercutting experts and cold hard data in an attempt to continue to redefine the “truth” to suit his regime.

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Trump is doing something he loves to do in this scenario with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, something we’ve seen him do before: take a completely routine, run of the mill phenomenon and turn it into something Bad that needs to be Fixed. Take tariffs. His argument for increasing tariffs is that other countries are “taking advantage of us” because trade deficits exist. This despite the fact that trade deficits are normal and just because we import more than we export to a country doesn’t mean that country is “taking advantage of us.” It just means that we want more of what they have than they want of what we have. Instead he’s twisting that into a problem only he can fix and only through unconscionably high tariff rates, and he’s trusting that the general public won’t know the difference.

With the BLS jobs revisions, he’s doing the same thing. Due to the quick turnaround necessary to compile and release a monthly jobs report, the data is naturally going to be incomplete and developing. Erica Groshen, a former BLS commissioner at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, told CNN earlier this year, “Revisions are not a bug, they’re a feature.” Jobs revisions are expected. In fact, they are so common that they can even track THAT stat, on average there is a monthly revision of 51,000 jobs. And while these latest revisions are larger than average, there is precedent for that as well, especially during economic transitions. When the economy is getting better or worse, the jobs revisions reflect that change as the data gets collected and the full picture is better unearthed. So as the economy transitions into a period of bad performance, which most economists have been warning about happening due to Trump’s policies, then those jobs numbers are going to see a larger negative revision, which is exactly what happened. But Trump is betting that the general public doesn’t know that jobs numbers revisions are incredibly common and expected, because they largely fly under the radar for the average American who maybe hears about the monthly jobs reports but not about the revisions that happen after the fact. So he can point to this incredibly normal phenomenon, label it a Problem that he is FINALLY going to Fix, and use that as pretext to question ALL the data the BLS compiles, and fire the head commissioner to replace her with a partisan hack.

Enter Dr. E.J. Antoni, this fuckin nerd, the man Trump has tapped to replace ousted BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer. Antoni is the head economist at, you guessed it, The Heritage Foundation, and helped write, say it with me, Project 2025. Great. Cool. Antoni, like Trump, is pointing to these revisions as though this is an unprecedented, secret deep state ploy to lie to the American people. He posted back in May quote “Month after month, the government bean-counters under former-president Biden published overly optimistic estimates for everything from job growth to the size of the economy, only to have those numbers routinely — and quietly — revised down later.” He neglects to mention that also happened during Trump’s first term and during other Republican presidential terms. The BLS has been collecting jobs data for over a century. In that time it has changed, tweaked, overhauled, and revised its methods based on incoming data, information, and feedback from experts. Across a century. But this guy, E.J. Antoni, who’s all of 5 years out from getting his PhD, knows better. And he’s going to fix it. Ignore the fact that economists across the political spectrum are screaming that he is utterly and completely unqualified, and a partisan hack to boot.

“Firing the Commissioner ... when the BLS revises jobs numbers down (as it routinely does) threatens to destroy trust in core American institutions, and all government statistics,” Arin Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, said on X. “I can’t stress how damaging this is.”

Janet Yellen, the former Treasury secretary and chair of the Federal Reserve, described the firing as “the kind of thing you would only expect to see in a banana republic.”

“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,” the statement from the group, the Friends of BLS, said.

“He’s utterly unqualified and as partisan as it gets,” said Stan Veuger, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

“There’s just nothing in his writing or his resume to suggest that he’s qualified for the position, besides that he is always manipulating the data to favor Trump in some way,” said Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law and Economics.

Indeed there are numerous examples of how Antoni likes to misinterpret or misrepresent data to make it seem positive for Trump or negative for the Democrat in charge. According to PBS, quote “Antoni wrongly claimed in the last year of Biden’s presidency that the economy had been in recession since 2022 … and posted a chart on social media that conflated timelines to suggest inflation was headed to 15%. His argument that the U.S. was in a recession rested on a vastly exaggerated measure of housing inflation, based on newly-purchased home prices, to artificially make the nation’s gross domestic product appear smaller than it was.

“This is actually maybe the worst Antoni content I’ve seen yet,” Alan Cole of the center-right Tax Foundation said on social media, referring to his recession claim.”

Past BLS commissioners generally have years in academia or other government roles under their belts before becoming the top dog at BLS. Erika McEntarfer, who Antoni is nominated to replace, spent over 20 years working in the government before being nominated for the head role at BLS. She started as an economist at the Census Bureau, became the lead Labor Markets economist at the Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies, worked briefly for the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy, and served on the staff of the White House Council of Economic Advisers for a year before Joe Biden nominated her to head the BLS in 2024, a role that typically serves a 4 year term across Presidential administrations and is meant to be independent and nonpartisan and usually is filled by a quiet economist without much public profile. Antoni, in contrast, got his PhD in economics from Northern Illinois University in 2020. Since then he has worked at The Heritage Foundation, The Texas Public Policy Institute, and served as a fellow at the “Committee to Unleash Prosperity.” He also makes the rounds frequently on right wing podcasts, including Steve Bannon’s War Room. It was Steve Bannon who, in recent weeks, was recommending Antoni for the role at BLS.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is, admittedly, not a federal agency I have ever spent 2 seconds thinking about other than keeping an eye on their regular reports on job and unemployment growth. Policy, economics, and stats wonks in a dark room somewhere counting numbers and doing shit with spreadsheets? Not really my thing, typically. But that was back when I trusted that the wonky work was being done by people who have genuine expertise in the area and who care about things like accuracy and transparency. And up until recently I think most people felt the same. Data from the BLS is seen as the gold standard of economic measurement globally. As the Associated Press reported, quote “Economists and Wall Street investors have for decades generally accepted the data as free from political bias.”

But, alas. Gone are the days when accusations of the “deep state” taking over and manipulating the government was relegated to just the CIA, to international coups and domestic assassinations. Now, the nerds in the Bureau of Labor Statistics are on the chopping block. Because it turns out that numbers, stats, those are about as close as you can get to the cut and dried “truth.” And Truth in an authoritarian regime is the enemy. So what do you do? Sow doubt in the validity of those numbers, use that as a pretense to fire the person or people charged with compiling those numbers, and then to reinforce that you are the one sole source of Truth, install a partisan hack, no experience necessary, in fact the less experience the better, to doctor up the stats, misinterpret the data, and take what was once a trusted source of information and turn it into yet another mouthpiece for the regime. And because you’ve already laid the groundwork with your followers that experts, people with experience, people with extensive schooling and training, extensive experience working in the government, are not to be trusted, all you have to do is tell them that the economists screaming about truth and information and how bad this all is, they’re all part of the problem, the radical left mob trying to hide the REAL truth from you, the truth only DONALD J TRUMP can deliver. And they’ll go right along with it. Sound about right?

Here’s why this matters. As I’ve already said, the stats coming out of the BLS set the gold standard for economic data that is followed closely across the globe. The numbers help the Federal Reserve set interest rates, help businesses and wall street understand the economy, which can have wide ranging effects on business practices and stock prices, but that’s not all. The BLS is also responsible for compiling the Consumer Price Index. According to Reuters, quote “The monthly Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index together historically have provided a comprehensive picture of U.S. inflation, including hundreds of data points depicting the changes in cost for everything from eggs to auto insurance, figures relied upon heavily by policymakers like those at the Federal Reserve. CPI is used to set the annual cost-of-living-adjustment for retirees receiving Social Security payments.”

So the work the BLS does affects all facets of the economy and whether or not its data is accurate is incredibly important for making sure our economy is responding to what’s actually happening. Now of course that’s not to say that BLS data collection and interpretation is completely above reproach. Budget cuts over the years, before Trump but also including the DOGE takeover and slashing in the government, means that BLS is incredibly underfunded. This means that they do not have the resources to improve their technology, they don’t have the resources to improve response rates to their surveys, and that has a big impact. The BLS relies heavily on surveys of businesses and households to compile its data. Especially since COVID, survey response rates have dropped, or it takes people a lot longer to respond, if they do at all. For example, in July the response rate for the BLS jobs survey was just under 58%. A decade ago the response rate was 83%. People just don’t respond to surveys anymore, no matter what it’s about. On top of that, the BLS doesn’t have the resources to do more outreach, public education, and more needed to make up the difference in those response rates. That means NOT that the data is inaccurate, just that it is incomplete and that it takes longer to get a complete picture.

For example, as reported by Reuters, quote “Years of underfunding of the BLS under both Republican and Democratic administrations and Trump White House's unprecedented campaign to reshape the government through deep spending cuts and mass layoffs of public workers have led to the suspension of data collection for portions of the CPI basket in some areas across the country.

That has led to the BLS using imputations to fill in the missing information. The percentage of prices that are imputed rather than gathered has more than tripled this year to 35%.”

That is going to naturally impact the stability of data and reports across time as the information is slower to be gathered, if it is gathered at all. The result is that BLS data across its reports is more erratic as survey results trickle in more slowly or are replaced with imputations where the BLS lacks the resources needed to gather actual data.

And so on the one hand you have Trump saying the data is wrong, putting in place a man who claims he wants to get better data, clean up the BLS, ensure that it is doing accurate work, and on the other hand you have massive federal layoffs, including at the BLS, as well as slashed budgets. Trump’s 2026 budget proposal cut the BLS budget alone by 56 MILLION dollars.

As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy recently reported quote “The collection of quality data is often labor-intensive, sometimes requiring massive field operations. When agency funding and staff levels cannot support the full collection effort, we risk losing the kind of data that is the hardest, and most essential, to collect: data in rural areas, smaller geographies, and often historically undercounted populations. This kind of slow data erasure poses serious challenges for tax policy research and modeling.”

The article goes on to say quote “Distrust in data will harm every American, leaving businesses less able to prepare for a recession, labor unions less equipped for potential layoffs, families less able to predict how far their paycheck will go. At the height of COVID deaths in June 2020, Trump famously said “if we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases if any.” A similar approach is emerging on job creation, economic growth, and tax collections: if reality doesn’t conform to the narrative, destroy the evidence.

The federal government’s statistical agencies are full of non-partisan career economists and statisticians who work hard to be responsible stewards of our nation’s data. And they continue to do so even under tight resource constraints and amid a fiercely partisan political environment. But last week’s attacks on BLS fuel growing fears among researchers and policy analysts that the data we rely on to understand policy may one day be compromised, suppressed, or deleted altogether.”

Trump’s firing of the BLS commissioner, taken in combination with other moves to undermine trust and access to information in this country, everything from slashing key information gathering agency budgets and personnel to removing Trump’s name from the impeachment exhibit at the Smithsonian to deleting entire sections of government websites and datasets related to LGBTQ plus issues or quote unquote DEI, reveals a very clear agenda under this administration to remove the truth and substitute the state’s propaganda in its absence, to manipulate numbers or fail to collect them altogether, in an attempt to prove that Trump is never wrong, to uphold his strongman image, and to suppress questioning and interrogation of the regime’s actions by the experts who no longer have access to trustworthy data, if the data still exists at all. You can’t say something bad is happening if you have no evidence that it’s happening. Unless you’re Trump, then you can say anything and evidence isn’t necessary.

The foreseeable outcome of all of this is that information that the government releases, even from historically non-partisan, independent agencies filled with experts dedicated to transparency, is now suspect. It cannot be taken for granted that ANY information the government releases is accurate. This erosion of trust in the accuracy of data undermines the United States and the experts it produces across the globe.

That being said, however, this does not mean that overnight the data coming out of the BLS is suspect. First of all, it could take upwards of six months for Antoni to get approved for his role. In that time, there will still be career economists working at the BLS to ensure the data is as accurate as possible under the circumstances. And even once Antoni gets in, his ability to actually manipulate the numbers is miniscule. According to PBS, quote “William Beach, who was appointed BLS commissioner by Trump in his first term and also served under Biden, said he is confident that BLS procedures are strong enough to prevent political meddling. He said he didn’t see the figures himself until two days before publication when he served as commissioner.

“The commissioner does not affect the numbers,’’ Beach said. “They don’t collect the data. They don’t massage the data. They don’t organize it.”

Regarding the odds of rigging the numbers, Beach said, “I wouldn’t put it at complete zero, but I’d put it pretty close to zero.’’”

Instead, what Antoni will likely do is manipulate the reports on those numbers by sharing data that doesn’t paint the whole picture, or data that shows something different than what he’s describing is happening, which is a habit he seems very comfortable with. So turning to experts that are trustworthy to interpret the data coming out of federal agencies is what we all need to do to ensure that those of us who aren’t economists and policy experts are getting an accurate interpretation of what the data says. I highly recommend following Kathryn Anne Edwards, she goes by keds underscore economist on tiktok and other social media, she has a podcast called Optimist Economy but I honestly find her tiktoks to be the most informative. Robert Reich served as the secretary of labor under Clinton and was on Obama’s economic transition advisory board. He makes all sorts of content and is really active on Substack. If you have other experts and economists you turn to, please throw them in the comments. Now more than ever it is important to lean on and support actual experts with a track record of honesty and transparency who are able to interpret whatever data we do get and keep us informed on what to trust and what to question.

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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from Monday about Trump’s DC takeover.

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