Fired by Trump, a Former Labor Official Warns Against Politicizing Economic Data

When the federal government revealed last month a sharp contraction in the nation’s hiring, President Trump attacked the report and abruptly fired the longtime civil servant responsible for overseeing the data.

On Tuesday, Erika McEntarfer, the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, offered her first major public comments on her ouster. She warned about the rising risk of political interference in the government’s work to measure the economy, stressing that it could harm consumers and businesses.

“Economic data must be free from partisan influence,” she said.

Ms. McEntarfer voiced her fears during a speech at Bard College in New York, her alma mater, more than one month after Mr. Trump dismissed her over his widely condemned claims that federal hiring data had been “rigged.” The report that month showed the economy had added about 250,000 fewer jobs this summer than the government first estimated, a revision that the president claimed — without evidence — had been manipulated to hurt him politically.

Ms. McEntarfer on Tuesday steered clear of addressing Mr. Trump directly, saying at one point she generally did not want to “speculate on what the plan is or the intentions of the administration are.”

But she repeatedly emphasized the risk in allowing politics to infect the work of B.L.S., whose reports inform policymakers, investors, businesses and others that require dependable economic data to make decisions. And she called attention to what she described as steep and persistent shortfalls in the agency’s staff and budget. Those gaps, she said, further complicated Washington’s task to reliably track the labor market, the ebb and flow of prices, and the nation’s overall growth.

“Markets have to trust the data are not manipulated,” Ms. McEntarfer added. “Firing your chief statisticians for releasing data you do not like, it has serious economic consequences. The list of countries that have gone down this route, it’s not a good list.”

Ms. McEntarfer drew a parallel between her work at B.L.S. and “live traffic updates,” the absence of which could make it harder for policymakers to address strains on workers, businesses and consumers.

“The reason my firing was big news is because nobody thinks it’s going be good for our economy if we start messing with those traffic lights,” she said.

Ms. McEntarfer’s comments essentially served as a counterpoint to the steady stream of attacks from the White House. At a moment when the economy is starting to show real signs of strain under Mr. Trump, the president and his top aides have continued to discredit the government’s top labor statistics agency as unreliable, arguing it is in need of a substantial shake-up.

To carry out that agenda, Mr. Trump last month nominated E.J. Antoni, a conservative economist at the Heritage Foundation, to serve as the next B.L.S. commissioner. Mr. Antoni, whose appointment requires Senate confirmation, previously criticized the bureau, its methods and reports, which led some economists to question whether he could be politically neutral in the role.

Ms. McEntarfer, who was confirmed by the Senate in 2024 on an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, did not address her replacement in the speech, even as she unfurled new details about her sudden ouster in early August.

She said that the day before the jobs report was made public, the labor statistics office had briefed administration officials about the substantial jobs revision. That briefing is a customary practice. She said that she did not get a sense at the time that the White House might fire her.

Later, in a briefing with top officials at the Labor Department, Ms. McEntarfer said she described the steep revision as an “unusual event,” but not “an unprecedented one.” She said it “typically occurs when the labor market slows suddenly,” citing downward pressure on hiring, given the uncertainty around the president’s tariffs and immigration policies.

Hours after the revisions were made public, Mr. Trump said he was firing Ms. McEntarfer. She said she first learned of her firing after receiving an email about it from a reporter, and initially did not believe it, given the president’s attacks on other government officials. But she soon noticed a “short note” had arrived in her email inbox from the presidential personnel office, which informed her of the dismissal.

Ms. McEntarfer said that she had left behind a statistics office that had struggled mightily at times in the face of chronic underfunding and, more recently, the cuts demanded by the Department of Government Efficiency, the team of young aides led at the time by tech mogul Elon Musk. She said that the push by D.O.G.E. to reduce the federal work force resulted in a 20 percent reduction in staff at B.L.S., compared to the start of the year.

“We were scrambling, trying to figure out operationally how we were going to get through the next week,” she said, as she described a period earlier this year when she was “praying nothing terrible was going to happen” to the agency’s data.

In doing so, Ms. McEntarfer sketched out her view of the office and its role, describing its ability to produce reliable data as essential to helping policymakers avert recessions, control inflation and stimulate growth.

She later said of the political dynamic: “The best hope is that interference stops with firing me.”