President Donald Trump’s dismissal of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner last Friday after she had announced that the US had added a lower-than-expected number of jobs was a threat to data credibility, a leading economist has said.
JP Morgan’s chief US economist, Mike Feroli, warned that Trump’s abrupt dismissal of Erika McEntarfer posed a serious threat to the credibility of US economic data – and compared its potential impact to the president’s attempts to influence the Federal Reserve.
Feroli said the politicisation of data collection was dangerous and could undermine trust in financial markets. He highlighted that US analysts relied heavily on accurate data from the BLS for setting policies and managing investments.
This sacking followed a weak jobs report for July 2025, which revealed just 74,000 new jobs – far below expectations – and included substantial downward revisions for May and June. Trump accused McEntarfer of manipulating job data for political reasons, though economists and former BLS officials emphasised that data revisions were standard practice and not the result of bias.
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The move triggered alarm across Wall Street, with investors expressing concern that interference in official statistics could erode confidence in US markets.
Market observers say that credible data has long underpinned the performance of US financial assets, and without it, long-term risks rise significantly.
Feroli noted that if businesses and traders lost faith in official figures, reliance on private-sector data provision, which lacks the reliability and national coverage of BLS data, may surge.
Trump accused McEntarfer of “faking” the latest employment figures for “political purposes”, but provided no evidence of his accusations. He has continued to refer to the bureau’s reports as “rigged” and concocted.
Katharine Abraham, who served as BLS commissioner from 1993 to 2001, said the “commissioner doesn’t have control over what the numbers are”.
The jobs report from the BLS is based on two surveys – one that collects data from about 60,000 households and another from 121,000 public and private sector employers.
Prof Abraham added that updates were part of the process and she was not surprised to see such large revisions for May and June, given increased difficulty of collecting responses and lack of investment in new methods – and the wider slowdown in the economy, driven in part by new tariffs.
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