Leading economists have warned that Donald Trump’s sacking of the head of the US labour statistics agency puts the president in the league of strongmen leaders such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
US economists polled by the Kent A Clark Center for Global Markets at the University of Chicago this week said there was no evidence to suggest that the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs figures displayed favouritism to either Republicans or Democrats. Many said Trump’s attacks on US economic institutions represented a serious threat to the country’s official statistics.
The warnings, which were shared with the Financial Times ahead of publication, come after Trump last Friday fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the BLS, after the July US jobs report showed a sharp slowdown in hiring over the summer.
The president claimed the report, which included sharp downward revisions to May and June hiring, was “totally rigged” against him and the Republican party.
Princeton’s José Scheinkman said Trump was “emulating” leaders like Erdoğan in “seizing control of stats agencies”. The Turkish president fired the head of the national statistical institute in 2022 after a report showed inflation hit a 19-year high and has also repeatedly sacked central bank chiefs.
Chad Syverson, of the Chicago Booth School of Business, similarly defended the BLS’s economic reports, saying, “statistical uncertainty that ends up resolving the way someone does not like is not political bias”.
“BLS statistics are produced in a way that has been consistent for years,” added Caroline Hoxby at Stanford.
Of the 46 economists polled, 38 said they strongly agreed that there was no evidence to suggest that the employment estimates produced by the BLS were biased so as to favour any particular political party. Another five agreed with the statement, while the remaining three did not respond to the question.
The White House declined to immediately comment on the survey.
While the BLS has suffered from staffing shortages, funding gaps and fewer responses to the surveys on which the employment data is based, both former statisticians and economists say that the methods used to create — and revise — the figures would make it difficult to manipulate.
“If you know anything about how the numbers are constructed, it would take a vast conspiracy to pull something like that off,” said Anil Kashyap of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
Trump has claimed the BLS had juiced job numbers higher last year to help Democrats win last year’s presidential election. However, the agency in August 2024 revised down its numbers by more than 800,000 in a move seen at the time as a blow to the Democrats.
“The BLS has produced inflation and employment data inconvenient to both parties,” said Judith Chevalier at Yale School of Management.
McEntarfer was confirmed by the Senate by a 86-8 majority in January 2024, with now vice-president JD Vance and current secretary of state Marco Rubio voting in favour.
Economists view the BLS’ data series, which range from the consumer price index inflation reading to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey’s labour market data and import price figures, as some of the best guides to the US’s economic performance.
Some economists are now questioning whether the data will remain a reliable measure on the world’s largest economy.
“The US has long had a well-deserved reputation for reliable economics statistics. Unlike China, the old USSR, and other countries where economic data were manipulated for political ends,” said Nancy Stokey of the University of Chicago. “Trump’s firing of the BLS head can only damage the reputation of the US.”
