Ex-labour stats chief talks about firing

When the federal government revealed last month a sharp contraction in the nation's hiring, President Donald Trump attacked the report and abruptly fired the longtime civil servant responsible for overseeing the data.

- TONY ROMM

On Tuesday, Erika McEntarfer, the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), offered her first major public comments on her ouster. She warned about the rising risk of political interference in the government's work to measure the economy, stressing that it could harm consumers and businesses.

"Economic data must be free from partisan influence," she said.

Ms McEntarfer voiced her fears during a speech at Bard College in New York, her alma mater, more than one month after Trump dismissed her over his widely condemned claims that federal hiring data had been "rigged." The report that month showed the economy had added about 250,000 fewer jobs this summer than the government first estimated, a revision that the president claimed — without evidence — had been manipulated to hurt him politically.

Ms McEntarfer on Tuesday avoided talking about Trump directly, saying at one point she did not want to "speculate on what the plan is or the intentions of the administration are."