Who is Erika McEntarfer, labor statistics chief sacked by Trump

President Trump on Friday accused the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Erika McEntarfer of faking jobs numbers, directing his team to fire the former President Biden appointee. 

Trump blamed McEntarfer for the bad Friday jobs report, showing that the country added 258,000 fewer jobs in May and June than previously reported. 

The U.S. added just 19,000 jobs in May, significantly lower than the 144,000 reported previously, and saw an increase of 14,000 jobs in June, more than 90 percent lower than the 147,000 initially shared. The country gained 73,000 jobs in July. In the last three months, the U.S. added 106,000 in total. 

An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to The Hill that McEntarfer was terminated from her post. A BLS official told The Hill that McEntarfer was sacked and that Deputy Commissioner William Wiatrowski will serve as acting head until the administration finds a replacement. 

Trump argued that McEntarfer, who was nominated by Biden in 2023 and confirmed to the post the following year, “faked” the jobs numbers before the 2024 presidential election to “boost” former Vice President Kamala Harris’s chance of winning in November. 

“This is the same Bureau of Labor Statistics that overstated the Jobs Growth in March 2024 by approximately 818,000 and, then again, right before the 2024 Presidential Election, in August and September, by 112,000,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post Friday on Truth Social. 

“These were Records — No one can be that wrong? We need accurate Jobs Numbers,” the president said, vowing that McEntarfer will be replaced by someone “much more competent and qualified.” 

McEntarfer, a labor economist who has worked in the federal government for more than two decades, was confirmed by the Senate in early 2024 in a bipartisan 86-8 vote. Her nomination was supported at the time by now Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the two former senators representing Ohio and Florida, respectively. 

Prior to working as the commissioner of the BLS, which is part of the Department of Labor, McEntarfer held positions within the Treasury Department, the Executive Office of the President and the U.S. Census Bureau, according to her biography posted on the BLS’s website. 

She was the head of research for the Longitudinal Employer–Household Dynamics program at the Census Bureau. The labor economist, who earned a bachelor’s degree in social science from Bard College and an economics Ph.D. from Virginia Tech, was a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers prior to joining the BLS. 

In another post on Truth Social, Trump claimed that Friday’s jobs report figures were “RIGGED” in order to make the president and Republican lawmakers “look bad.” 

“Just like when they had three great days around the 2024 Presidential Election, and then, those numbers were ‘taken away’ on November 15, 2024, right after the Election, when the Jobs Numbers were massively revised DOWNWARD, making a correction of over 818,000 Jobs — A TOTAL SCAM,” Trump wrote. 

The BLS often revises job number tallies, but the scale of the change in the Friday report surprised investors and experts after a solid week of economic data. 

“Persistent policy uncertainty, tariffs, and diminished immigration flows paralyzing employers, the US economy is now flirting with job losses, revealing a labor market that is much weaker than most Fed policymakers had believed,” EY-Parthenon chief economist Gregory Daco wrote.

The collection of economic data can take time due to the slow response rates of those surveyed and the size of the economy. The delay does not necessarily mean the data is being manipulated.

The BLS said in August last year that the U.S. added 818,000 fewer jobs over a one-year period than what was previously reported. 

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said Friday that she agrees with Trump’s decision to fire McEntarfer and confirmed that Wiatrowski will work as the acting commissioner. 

“A recent string of major revisions have come to light and raised concerns about decisions being made by the Biden-appointed Labor Commissioner,” Chavez-DeRemer said in a Friday post on social platform X. “I support the President’s decision to replace Biden’s Commissioner and ensure the American People can trust the important and influential data coming from BLS.” 

William W. Beach, who served as the BLS head during Trump’s first term, disagreed with the president’s decision to terminate McEntarfer, warning it would set a “dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau.”