News: Republican Administration Fires Head of BLS After ‘Bad’ Jobs Report

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Republican President Donald Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after the most recent release of jobs data. Due to the importance of this event, we will go over it in today’s newsletter, instead of our planned article on the impacts of unemployment insurance, which will come out next week.

In Part 1, we will briefly go over what happened, while in Part 2, we will discuss how measurements are misunderstood.

Part 1: The firing of BLS Commissioner

What happened

On August 1, Republican President Donald Trump fired the BLS Commissioner, Erika McEntarfer. This happened soon after the BLS published its latest employment report for the month of July. Moreover, the BLS also updated the employment reports for the months of June and May. 

For the month of July, the BLS report stated that the number of jobs increased by 73,000, while unemployment was at 4.2%. For the month of June, the BLS revised the number of jobs created from 144,000 to 19,000 (a 125,000 reduction), while for May, the number of jobs created changed from 147,000 to 14,000 (a 133,000 reduction).

Why it happened

The reason for the firing given by the President was as follows:

"We need accurate Jobs Numbers," Trump wrote. "She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes."

What does it mean

In Part 2, I will explain why the ‘reason’ given by the President is incorrect and unfounded. That is, the BLS provides high quality, fair and accurate data. 

The main concern arising from this decision is that new data releases will no longer be fair and accurate. This is a valid concern, although somewhat alleviated by the fact that if manipulation were to occur, the sheer number of people involved in the BLS data collection would result in at least a few of