Who Does Trump Fire If He Hates This Jobs Report?
The president and his allies have taken aim at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but their ire at revised data may be misplaced.
Revisions are generally much smaller now than in the 1980s.
Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images
After the release of a disappointing July US employment report early last month, President Trump fired the head of the agency that produced it. With another monthly jobs report coming on Friday and a preliminary announcement on annual benchmark revisions scheduled for next week, it’s worth revisiting his explanation — which I am reproducing in full after several failed attempts to summarize it:
There is, as they say, a lot going on here — much of it contradictory. Once a year, the BLS benchmarks the nonfarm payroll employment numbers from its monthly Current Employment Statistics survey against data gathered from state unemployment insurance programs. Last August, it made a preliminary estimate that this would result in a decrease in nonfarm payroll employment of 818,000 jobs, or 0.5% (when it actually made the benchmark adjustment in February, this was reduced to 598,000 jobs, or 0.4%). The BLS also revises the previous two months’ nonfarm payroll numbers with each monthly jobs report as information comes in from more employers; in early November 2024, it revised the August and September numbers downward by a total of 112,000 jobs.