The former chief US economics data statistics who Donald Trump fired last month called her sudden removal “dangerous” and said Americans should be concerned about the independence of key economic institutions.
“Markets have to trust the data are not manipulated,” said Erika McEntarfer, the former head of the Bureau Labor of Statistics, in her first remarks since her firing. “Firing your chief statisticians for releasing data you do not like, it has serious economic consequences.”
The bureau collects and releases key economic data on the labor market and prices. In August, the bureau revised down initial figures that showed steady job growth in May and June by 258,000. Hours after the release, Trump fired McEntarfer, claiming without evidence that the “jobs numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad”.
It was the first time a president had fired the head of the data bureau, and it left many economists shaken by what the future of the nonpartisan bureau could look like. Trump has since nominated EJ Antoni, chief economist at the conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation and a co-author of Project 2025, in addition to a vocal critic of BLS, as McEntarfer’s replacement.
Antoni has not yet been confirmed by Congress. William Wiatrowski, a longtime official within the bureau, is currently serving as acting commissioner.
McEntarfer, speaking at Bard College, said that although she trusts Wiatrowski, she is concerned about the future of the bureau.
“Firing your chief statisticians for releasing data you do not like has serious economic consequences,” she said, noting that the collection of countries that have gone down a similar route, including Argentina, Greece and Turkey, is “not a good list”.
“The resulting loss of trust in economics statistics led these countries to worsening economic crises, higher inflation and higher borrowing costs,” McEntarfer said.
Even before her firing, McEntarfer said she was prepared to lead the bureau toward modernizing its data collection. But the bureau’s funding dried up, particularly once Trump entered office. Under cuts from Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, the bureau’s staff fell 20% since January after hiring freezes and delayed onboarding.
McEntarfer said that, once Musk left the White House, she was hoping that the bureau could “return to some sense of normalcy”.
But when July’s jobs report was published, McEntarfer said a journalist reached out to her for comment about Trump’s social media post that said he was firing McEntarfer. At first, she didn’t take it seriously, but then she soon got a short email from the White House announcing her termination.
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“I can vouch for the accuracy and independence of the work of the agency up until the moment I was fired,” McEntarfer said, in light of Trump’s accusations. The data was revised downward after businesses responded to the survey late, likely “because they’re just too busy trying to stay alive”.
Her firing suddenly made her a household name. She recalled the days when she had to be “careful not to bore family and friends by talking too much about my wonky job”.
“Now all of a sudden, the whole world was talking about it,” McEntarfer said. “You should get to live in a country where you do not know who the chief statistician is.”
She said the bureau is facing “an uncertain moment” and said that Americans should broadly be concerned about the future of key economic institutions, including the Federal Reserve, which has also received heavy attacks from the White House.
“Messing with economic data is like messing with the traffic lights and turning the sensors off. Cars don’t know where to go, traffic backs up at intersections,” she said. “Nobody thinks it’s going to be good for the country if we start messing with those traffic lights.”
