Trump Didn’t Like the July Jobs Report. So He Fired the Head of Labor Statistics

President Donald Trump didn’t like what he saw in the July jobs report, and the government’s head of employment data is out of a job as a result.

The latest monthly report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, released early Friday, showed that U.S. employers added 73,000 jobs last month, far fewer than economists had estimated. Of bigger concern to Trump, and to financial markets, the BLS said it had revised downward the previously announced employment figures for May and June by a total of 258,000 jobs.

In a Friday afternoon post on Truth Social, Trump said that he directed his team to immediately fire Erika McEntarfer, the BLS commissioner. The president alleged that revisions to job numbers are politically motivated, saying he was “just informed” that McEntarfer was appointed by former President Joe Biden.

“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,” Trump wrote. “In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” the president said in a subsequent post.

The abrupt removal of the BLS head could spark concerns about the reliability of government data upon which economists and investors rely. William Beach, a Trump appointee who served as BLS commissioner before McEntarfer, called the dismissal “groundless” in a post on X, and said it “sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau.”

The president accused McEntarfer of issuing “fake” job numbers before the 2024 election in order to help Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. He cited revisions to data from March, August and September of last year.

After Trump’s post, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said that bureau’s Deputy Commissioner William Wiatrowski will serve as its acting director during a search for its new leader.

McEntarfer was appointed to the position in January 2024, becoming the 16th person to head the bureau that also produces the Consumer Price Index monthly inflation report and the monthly job openings report. She was confirmed by an 86-8 vote in the Senate. 

Trump Continues Bashing Fed’s Powell

In his posts about the jobs report on Friday, Trump once again took aim at Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for not cutting interest rates, also suggesting the central bank chief is politically motivated.

Trump said that the Fed cut interest rates last fall to help Harris win the election. “How did that work out? Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should also be put ‘out to pasture,”” the president wrote.

Despite pressure from Trump, the Fed this week decided to hold its key interest rate steady. Powell and other Fed officials have argued that they need to see more data on how tariffs affect inflation before adjusting rates.

The weak jobs numbers could prompt the Fed to grow more comfortable with the idea of a rate cut. The Fed has a dual mandate to promote high employment and maintain price stability, and if the balance of risks tilts more toward a softening labor market, lower rates would be in order.

Market expectations for a rate cut at the Fed’s next policy committee meeting in September surged on Friday. Traders are now pricing in a likelihood of three quarter-point cuts before the end of the year, according to CME Group’s FedWatch Tool.

Meanwhile, the Fed announced Friday afternoon that Adriana Kugler, a member of the Board of Governors and and a voter on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee, would be stepping down next week, ahead of the end of her term in January.

That gives Trump the ability to appoint a governor who favors rate cuts. At Wednesday’s FOMC meeting, two governors—Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman—were in favor of a rate cut, the first time in more than 30 years that there were two dissenters on the committee.