Trump Orders Firing of Key Economic Official as Cracks Emerge in US Jobs Market

He Accuses Labor Statistics Commissioner of Manipulating Data for Political Reasons

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said on August 1 he has ordered the firing of a key economic official, accusing her of manipulating employment data for political reasons after a new report showed cracks in the US jobs market.

US jobs growth missed expectations in July, Labor Department data showed, and revisions to hiring figures in recent months brought them to the weakest levels since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr. Trump lashed out at the department's commissioner of labor statistics — Dr. Erika McEntarfer — after the report, writing on social media that the jobs numbers "were rigged in order to make the Republicans, and me, look bad."

In a separate post on his Truth Social platform, he charged that Dr. McEntarfer had "faked" jobs data to boost Democrats' chances of victory in the recent presidential election.

"McEntarfer said there were only 73,000 jobs added (a shock!) but, more importantly, that a major mistake was made by them, 258,000 jobs downward, in the prior two months," Mr. Trump said, referring to the latest data for July.

"Similar things happened in the first part of the year, always to the negative," he added.

He insisted that the world's biggest economy was "booming" under his leadership.