Trump vs. the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Summary

Trump vs. the Bureau of Labor Statistics: A Comprehensive Summary

Episode Release Date: August 4, 2025
Hosts: Ryan Knutson and Jessica Mendoza
Production: The Wall Street Journal & Spotify Studios

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1. Introduction: Unveiling the Controversy

In the August 4, 2025 episode of The Journal, hosts Ryan Knutson and Jessica Mendoza delve into a significant political and economic clash between former President Donald Trump and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The focal point of the discussion centers around the latest monthly jobs report released by the BLS, which has ignited tensions and led to unprecedented actions within the agency.

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2. The Weakest Jobs Report in Trump’s Term

Jessica Mendoza introduces the episode by highlighting the release of the BLS's monthly jobs report, monitored closely by business and financial journalist Matt Grossman.

Matt Grossman explains, “Friday morning started with a routine jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics... giving information on the previous month's labor market” (00:16). However, this particular report signaled “the weakest one to come since the beginning of President Donald Trump's second term” (00:32), marking a notable downturn in employment figures.

The report revealed that the economy added 73,000 jobs in July, falling short of economists' expectations. More critically, it was later disclosed that in May and June, the economy had actually added 258,000 fewer jobs than initially reported (00:37). This discrepancy suggested deeper issues within the labor market than previously understood, signaling an economic slowdown.

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3. Trump's Reaction: Allegations of Data Manipulation

The disappointing figures did not sit well with President Trump. Matt Grossman notes, “That really seemed to enrage President Trump” (01:04). In a swift response, Trump fired Erica McIntarfer, the then-commissioner of the BLS, accusing her of “presiding over an office that was rigging the statistics to make a political point against him” (01:24).

This move was unprecedented, as the BLS has long been regarded as a nonpartisan and impartial agency (01:34). Matt Grossman emphasizes, “there's really, for decades, never been any serious allegations that the numbers are skewed for political purposes” (01:34), making Trump's allegations and subsequent actions a shocking development for those who rely on BLS data.

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4. Understanding the Monthly Jobs Report

To contextualize the controversy, Matt Grossman breaks down the components of the monthly jobs report:

• Establishment Survey: Involves roughly 120,000 businesses answering, “how many people work for you?” This provides a broad overview of job creation or destruction across the economy.

• Household Survey: Engages households to determine the unemployment rate.

These two datasets combine to offer a comprehensive view of the labor market, encompassing both job creation numbers and unemployment statistics.

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5. Leadership at the BLS: Erica McIntarfer’s Tenure

Erica McIntarfer, the former head of the BLS, brought a wealth of experience to the agency. With a PhD in economics, her career spanned various government statistics agencies, including significant time at the Census Bureau and the Treasury Department. Appointed by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate with an 86 to 8 vote in 2024, McIntarfer was lauded for her expertise and commitment to statistical integrity (05:57).

Despite her qualifications, the BLS under McIntarfer faced criticisms related to the timing of data releases. In 2024, incidents occurred where statistics were either released prematurely or accessed by select groups ahead of the public, undermining market trust (06:32). However, Matt Grossman clarifies that these issues did not pertain to the accuracy of the data itself, but rather the timing of its release (07:19).

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6. Revisions to the Jobs Report: Routine or Manipulative?

Matt Grossman and Jessica Mendoza discuss the nature of data revisions within the jobs report. Matt explains that revisions are a standard procedure, akin to adjusting guest counts for a wedding as RSVPs come in late (08:45). These adjustments ensure the most accurate representation of the labor market as more data becomes available.

However, the recent negative revision of 258,000 fewer jobs than initially reported intensified Trump’s narrative that the BLS was manipulating statistics against him. In response, Trump declared, “I believe the numbers were phony... I fired her. And you know what? I did the right thing” (10:23).

Professionals in economics dismiss Trump's claims, asserting that revisions are routine and transparent, aimed at maintaining data accuracy rather than serving political agendas (08:16).

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7. Fallout from McIntarfer’s Dismissal

Following her termination, Erica McIntarfer expressed her sentiments on social media, stating that leading the BLS was “the honor of my life.” The Friends of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an independent advocacy group, released a statement condemning Trump's actions as “baseless and damaging,” emphasizing that her firing was “without merit” (11:03).

Despite the turmoil, the BLS has continued its operations, maintaining the same level of transparency and data provision as before. Matt Grossman notes that the agency views the situation as “business as usual” from their perspective (11:03).

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8. Broader Challenges Facing the Bureau of Labor Statistics

In a speech earlier in the year, Erica McIntarfer outlined significant challenges confronting the BLS:

1. Rising Operational Costs: Increasing salaries and the need to keep pace with technological advancements have strained the BLS’s budget.

2. Declining Survey Participation: There has been a noticeable drop in participation rates from businesses and households in the BLS surveys, a trend mirrored globally. This decline poses a threat to the quality and reliability of the data collected (12:08).

Additionally, the BLS has been grappling with a staffing shortage since 2025, attributed to a federal hiring freeze initiated by Trump in January. While the vast scale of BLS surveys (60,000 households and 120,000 businesses monthly) typically mitigates the impact of lower response rates, the combination of reduced staffing and participation rates presents a growing concern for the agency's future operations (13:56).

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9. The Future of the BLS: Stability or Political Influence?

Looking ahead, the episode explores the potential implications of Trump's influence over the BLS. Matt Grossman conveys that while former commissioners assert the current system’s safeguards against political interference—stating that data is "hard coded into the computer system" before the commissioner even reviews it (15:31)—the appointment of a new commissioner by Trump raises questions about future data integrity.

The conversation highlights skepticism among economists regarding the possibility of politicizing the BLS, given its established reputation for neutrality and methodological rigor. However, the uncertainty remains palpable as stakeholders await Trump's appointment and observe how the agency navigates its challenges amidst political pressures (16:27).

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10. Conclusion: A Precarious Balance of Integrity and Influence

The episode concludes with reflections on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ precarious position. Over the past decade, the BLS has managed to deliver reliable data while contending with increasing operational costs and declining participation rates. However, recent events—especially the dismissal of Erica McIntarfer and potential political appointments—threaten to undermine the agency's esteemed legacy.

Matt Grossman succinctly captures the gravity of the situation: “very quickly we moved from an agency that was sort of doing its best and persisting despite some challenges, to one that is really facing a more acute situation than it's seen in decades” (16:56). The integrity of economic data, crucial for informed decision-making, now hangs in a delicate balance between steadfast methodology and potential political manipulation.

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This summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode "Trump vs. the Bureau of Labor Statistics" of The Journal. For more detailed analysis and ongoing updates, listeners are encouraged to tune into future episodes.

Transcript

[Jessica Mendoza]

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report. Our colleague Matt Grossman, who covers business and financial news, was following the story as he usually does.

[Matt Grossman]

Friday morning started with a routine jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is a report that we get every month on the first Friday of the month, giving information on the previous month's labor market.

[Jessica Mendoza]

This jobs report was the weakest one to come since the beginning of President Donald Trump's second term.

[Matt Grossman]

The report said that the economy added 73,000 jobs in July, which was less than economists had expected. But maybe the bigger news was that the Labor Department said that in May and June, the economy actually added 258,000 fewer jobs than it had initially reported in those months.

[Jessica Mendoza]

To economists, it was clear the report showed signs of a slowing economy, and.

[Matt Grossman]

That really seemed to enrage President Trump. And a few hours later, he announced that he was firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erica McIntarfer, alleging that she was presiding over an office that was rigging the statistics to make a political point against him.

[Jessica Mendoza]

For decades, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is part of the Labor Department, has been relied upon as a nonpartisan and impartial agency.

[Matt Grossman]

And there's really, for decades, never been any serious allegations that the numbers are skewed for political purposes. So it was very unusual for a president to add a political spin to the office and was really a shock to people who follow the statistics.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Monday, August 4th. Coming up on the show, the drama over data at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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[Jessica Mendoza]

Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order 1,800contacts. What is the monthly jobs report? What's in it?

[Matt Grossman]

Monthly jobs report has two main sets of data. One is called the Establishment Survey, which asks about 120,000 businesses. Very simple question, how many people work for you? And that survey is used to get a picture across the whole economy of, of how many jobs are being created or destroyed, how many people have been hired, how many people have lost their jobs. Of course, this is a number that politicians always fixate on.

[Donald Trump]

This robust growth, 4.2% is touching the lives of all our people.

[Matt Grossman]

Our businesses created another 121,000 jobs last month. We often hear a president talking about how many jobs were created during his term or during the previous president's term.

[Donald Trump]

Now it's 4 million jobs created since the election. 528,000 jobs were added just last month.

[Jessica Mendoza]

To this country's employment. In addition to asking businesses about their hiring numbers, the Labor Department also surveys households about employment. That survey is the basis for the nation's unemployment rate.

[Matt Grossman]

So the monthly jobs report's combining these two sets of information, the payroll survey and the household survey, to give first of all the job creation total and second of all the unemployment rate.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And running the whole show here at the Bureau of Labor Statistics was Dr. Erica McIntarfer. Can you tell us about her? How long has she worked in government? What's her background?

[Matt Grossman]

So like most people who lead the BLS, McIntarfer had a PhD in economics. Joining the government statistics agencies was her first career after she finished graduate School.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Erica McIntarfer had been in government since 2002. She spent most of her career at another statistics heavy, the Census Bureau.

[Matt Grossman]

And she was really involved in the meat and potatoes of how the government does economic statistics. She rose through the ranks as a really notable labor economist within the Census Bureau, someone who is really focused on developing the best statistical techniques possible to, to gauge what it's like to be a worker in the United States, how people's careers were evolving, how policy trends were affecting people's careers.

[Jessica Mendoza]

MacIntarfer also spent a couple of years at the Treasury Department and worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations through the course of her career. She rose to the head of the Bureau of Labor statistics in 2024 when she was nominated by then President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate 86 to 8. How well did she do leading BLS that first year?

[Matt Grossman]

People who worked with McIntarfer throughout her career, including at BLS, said that she's really a great example of what it takes to do this job. Well, she has a mix of experience that can be kind of hard to find.

[Jessica Mendoza]

She's a statistician. Statistician. But she's also somebody who has experience in, like, communication.

[Matt Grossman]

Yeah, that's exactly right.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But the agency did face some criticisms during McIntarfer's tenure.

[Matt Grossman]

There were a couple times last year in 2024, when the agency kind of mishandled how it announces statistics. In one case, it posted them too early. In another case, a subgroup of people got to see them earlier than others. And that's a really big deal because investors can win or lose millions of dollars based on how they trade right when the statistics come out. So it's really important that nobody has any kind of time advantage or gets to see the numbers before others.

[Jessica Mendoza]

In both of those cases, the BLS said the information was released mistakenly and called for investigations.

[Matt Grossman]

That said, there's been really no criticism from professional economists that she mishandled the statistics themselves, that there was any shortcomings in their accuracy or any deviation from how they're normally produced.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That seems like an important distinction. The accuracy of the numbers versus the timing of the release.

[Matt Grossman]

Yeah, absolutely. And that really landed front and center because it's something that President Trump fixated on.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Trump has criticized the Bureau of Labor Statistics before. One notable instance came last year. On the campaign trail. Then candidate Trump accused the agency of helping the Biden administration. He claimed that revisions to the jobs data showed that Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were cooking the numbers.

[Matt Grossman]

Professional economists really push back on that. They say that the revisions are routine, that they can make headlines, but recently they really haven't been any bigger than they normally are. And people who do this for a living explain that it's just a really hard problem to make these statistics every month and. And to balance doing them accurately and quickly enough to get them just a couple weeks after the month that they're supposed to represent.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Are these revisions to the jobs report common? This is standard.

[Matt Grossman]

Yeah, it's absolutely standard. There's nothing uncommon or surprising about any of this. The BLS has been, in fact, doing this the very same way for decades. The revisions almost work. Like if you're planning a wedding and you're getting RSVPs from different guests, at some point, there's a deadline where you have to tell the caterer how many people are going to show up. But you might not have gotten RSVPs from all the guests yet. And at that point, you kind of have to make your best guess about what the guests that you haven't heard from yet are going to tell you.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Oh, my gosh. You're giving me like, I just had my wedding a couple months ago. I'm like, oh, my God, I remember how this feels. Yes. Okay.

[Matt Grossman]

So it's the same for the bls. The month ends and they've heard from so some group of survey respondents, but not others, and they're making their best guess about what those extra people are going to tell them when their responses come in late. So pretty simple, you know, if they're.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Having beef or chicken or fish.

[Matt Grossman]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Friday's jobs report had a big revision, and it painted a picture of a weaker economy than previously thought.

[Matt Grossman]

It's routine for the Labor Department to revise previous months as it gets new data, but this was a really negative revision, one that was a little bit bigger than revisions have been. Recently, President Trump has fit these revisions into a narrative that he's been looking at for years now, which is a complaint that the statistics are intentionally rigged against him.

[Donald Trump]

I believe the numbers were phony, just like they were before the election. And there were other times. So you know what I did? I fired her. And you know what? I did the right thing.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And has MacIntarfer or anyone from the Bureau of Labor Statistics responded to this criticism?

[Matt Grossman]

We reached out to McIntarfer over the past few days. She hasn't responded to our request for comment. The BLS has just sort of gone about its business as it usually does. It's provided the same amount of information about its revisions as it always has. And from the BLS's perspective, perspective, you know, it's just business as usual.

[Jessica Mendoza]

After she was fired, McIntar posted on social media saying that serving as the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was, quote, the honor of my life. The Friends of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is an independent organization that advocates for transparent government data, and it released a statement after McIntarfer was ousted. It called Trump's claims of data rigging, quote, baseless and damaging and said that the firing of MacIntarfer is without merit. Beyond the events of the past few days, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is also facing other big challenges. That's after the break.

[Erica McIntarfer]

Good afternoon, and thank you so much for that wonderful introduction, and thanks so much for the opportunity to speak here in Atlanta today.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's Erica McIntarfer giving a speech earlier this year detailing problems and challenges at her agency, the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

[Erica McIntarfer]

Of course, we face real challenges at the federal level as well. Which endanger much of the official data that I've been talking about today and that we currently rely on.

[Matt Grossman]

MEC and Tarfurg really emphasized that there are two challenges that the BLS is up against. First of all, it costs more and more to do this work because salaries are going up and the cost of keeping up with technology is going up. But on the other hand, they're getting less participation from the businesses and households that they need to participate in these surveys.

[Erica McIntarfer]

So most of our official data depends on surveys, and response rates to surveys are down here in the US and worldwide.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And what has that meant for BLS and for those who rely on its data, particularly the low response rates?

[Matt Grossman]

So far? Most economists think that the low response rates are not a serious problem to creating good statistics, because one thing that the BLS has going for it is that the size of its surveys are just huge. To survey 60,000 households and 120,000 businesses every month, just a gigantic survey compared with the kinds of numbers that you see in a political poll, for example. These are just much, much bigger surveys. And so the response rate is going down, but it's starting at such a high number of respondents that so far they've sort of been able to afford taking a bit of a hit on this front. That said, economists are really concerned that going forward, the BLS is going to have to find new ways of doing business.

[Jessica Mendoza]

So what's the upshot of these challenges for the bls?

[Matt Grossman]

Well, in some places, they are having to do more guesswork. Interestingly, that's not yet, because the survey responses are down so far. Again, their baseline surveys are so big that even with lower response rate, the guesses haven't really gotten less precise. The one reason that they have gotten less precise so far this year is that there's a staffing shortage. And this is a new problem that has started in 2025, which the BLS has attributed to this federal hiring freeze that President Trump put in place starting in January.

[Jessica Mendoza]

What are outside watchers saying about the state of the bls? Given these challenges that you've just laid out, does it need a revamp?

[Matt Grossman]

I think a lot of economists would be really frightened at the idea of a revamp, because despite the problems, the BLS has really worked the way that it's supposed to. Yes, there are funding challenges. There have been a few communication stumbles recently. But economists even from other countries really esteem the BLS as one of the best agencies in the world at what it does. And doing this in a really nonpartisan, non political way. There are a lot of best practices that are really deeply embedded in how the BLS does its work.

[Jessica Mendoza]

If Trump did appoint a BLS chief, which it's likely that he will, what would happen if that person then presented job numbers more in Trump's favor?

[Matt Grossman]

That is a huge question right now. People who have worked at the BLS at the highest levels tell me that it would be very hard for the BLS commissioner to have any influence on the numbers under the current system. The BLS commissioner doesn't find out what the numbers are until a couple days before they're released to the public. Former commissioner of the bls, William beach, has said that the numbers are already hard coded into the computer system by the time the commissioner gets to see them. So, you know, he and some of his other fellow former commissioners have said that the way the system works now, it would be very, very difficult for the head of the BLS or anyone else in a political position at the bureau to put their thumb on the scale.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And what'll you be looking at next?

[Matt Grossman]

There are a lot of questions here. Who will President Trump appoint to be the next commissioner? How will that person handle the job? How will. Will they be a normal BLS commissioner as we've had for decades, or will it be a much more politicized BLS and how it communicates and how it does its business?

[Jessica Mendoza]

And Matt says the whole bureau is now on shakier ground than at any other moment in modern history.

[Matt Grossman]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been in a gradually worsening position for a decade where they've had to do more with less. They haven't gotten the funding that they've needed to improve their methods, and yet they've still been doing their jobs as well as they can, as far as we can tell. So very quickly we moved from an agency that was sort of doing its best and persisting despite some challenges, to one that is really facing a more acute situation than it's seen in decades.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's all for today. Monday, August 4th the Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Justin lehart, Alex Leary and Brian Schwartz. Courts thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.