'This Is Damaging': Former BLS Chief Slams Trump Firing of McEntarfer Over Weak Jobs Report

The former head of the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics has joined those speaking out loudly against President Donald Trump's weekend firing of BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer, who was dismissed after a jobs report released Friday showed the economy taking on water under Trump's leadership.

In an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, William Beach, who was nominated by Trump during his first term and ran the nonpartisan BLS directly before McEntarfer, defended the agency's independence and argued that Trump's firing will do lasting damage to the trust placed in the bureau. The firing, he argued, could have severe consequences for the national economy and wider negative reverberations.

"I don't think there's any grounds at all for this firing. And it really hurts the statistical system," said Beach. "It undermines credibility... This is damaging."

Pressed by CNN's anchor to address unsubstantiated claims by Trump that McEntarfer somehow "rigged" the numbers that resulted in the poor jobs report, Beach said that was impossible.

"There's no way for that to happen," explained Beach. "The commissioner doesn't do anything to collect the numbers. The commissioner doesn't see the numbers until Wednesday before they're published. By the time the commissioner sees the numbers, they are all prepared; they're locked into the computer system."

On Friday, following the initial public comments by Trump, Beach was among the signatories of a statement issued by the Friends of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an independent group of outside organizations dedicated to economic statistics and analysis that supports the mission of the BLS.

The statement—signed by the Friends of the BLS co-chairs, of whom Beach is one, and members of its steering committee—states that the "baseless, damaging claim" about McEntarfer made by Trump "undermines the valuable work and dedication of BLS staff who produce the reports each month" and "escalates the President's unprecedented attacks on the independence and integrity of the federal statistical system."

And continues:

The President seeks to blame someone for unwelcome economic news. The Commissioner does not determine what the numbers are but simply reports on what the data show. The process of obtaining the numbers is decentralized by design to avoid opportunities for interference. The BLS uses the same proven, transparent, reliable process to produce estimates every month. Every month, BLS revises the prior two months’ employment estimates to reflect slower-arriving, more-accurate information.

This rationale for firing Dr. McEntarfer is without merit and undermines the credibility of federal economic statistics that are a cornerstone of intelligent economic decision-making by businesses, families, and policymakers. U.S. official statistics are the gold standard globally. When leaders of other nations have politicized economic data, it has destroyed public trust in all official statistics and in government science.

The statement says Trump's politicization of BLS data is a great disservice to the agency and its workers as well as the "entire federal statistical system which this country has relied on for almost 150 years." The group called for a congressional inquiry into McEntarfer's firing by Trump.

Friday's job report sparked headlines nationwide questioning the strength of the labor market and the economy overall, under Trump's leadership.

"America's remarkably resilient labor market was a mirage," Axios reported on Friday, for example. "Hiring came to a screeching halt in the last few months, suggesting more underlying economic weakness than it seemed."

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, was among those who slammed Trump for his Orwellian behavior in the wake of a bad jobs report that many economists predicted was on its way due to the president's misguided trade policies and giveaways to the rich at the expense of working people.

"Trump has made a career of calling up down, and calling the truth a lie," said Weissman in a Friday statement. "But the threat to the integrity of the Bureau of Labor Statistics—the trusted source of objective, factual information about the state of the economy—is a Newspeak project of a whole other level and will undermine not just public understanding but evidence-based policymaking altogether."

While "profoundly troubling," Weissman said nobody should be surprised by what Trump has done.

"Authoritarians always try to control and dominate the information landscape to undermine opposition to their harmful policies," he said. "Yet again, to advance his narrow, personal, and political interests, Donald Trump is undermining the interests of the United States and leaving us a weaker and more vulnerable nation."