Last week, the Trump administration took a massive shot when labor statistics were updated to wipe out two months of gains.
Donald Trump went ballistic, pushing back against the figures as well as firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, claiming she had politicized the reports.
Now, a top Trump adviser is defending the move by Trump.
On Friday, the Trump administration was hit with a gutshot for job reports.
Not only had July missed the mark by about 30%, but the job gains for May and June were virtually erased, with an adjustment of about 258,000, erasing all but 33,000 jobs.
Bankrate senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick stated, “Hiring has hit a wall in the U.S. Substantial downward revisions in payrolls means that private sector hiring has averaged a little more than 50,000 jobs over the past three months.”
Wall Street was in shock, with some investors panicking, seeing a small selloff that dropped the Dow by more than 500 points.
It did not take Trump long to go after Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the BLS, who Trump claimed had falsified reports to make Biden look better, as well as reporting bogus numbers to embarrass him.
Trump posted, "We need accurate Jobs Numbers. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes."
He later added, "In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad."
Democrats came out claiming Trump was being a dictator by “firing the messengers” of his disastrous policies, and it took the media about five seconds to jump on that train. The effort was led by NBC’s Kristen Welker, who has never met a Democrat talking point she did not fall in love with.
While interviewing White House Economic Council adviser Kevin Hassett, Welker used that exact talking point, to which Hassett responded, "No. Absolutely not.”
He continued, "I would have a long report explaining what happened, and we didn’t get that. We didn’t get that. Right now, Goldman Sachs, people on Wall Street are wondering, ‘Where did these revisions come from and why do they keep happening?’ And what we need is a fresh set of eyes at the BLS.”
I happen to agree with Trump on this one, as we see these massive adjustments take place all the time, but never by this much. There is way too much tied to these reports for them to be so inaccurate. They need to find a better way to get more accurate numbers so these massive adjustments are not taking place. I don’t know if Trump firing McEntarfer will make any difference, however, unless they change the process.
