Trump fires BLS head after disappointing revisions
The big news at the end of the week was that Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was fired after revised labor data showed sharply reduced hiring than was previously reported.
President Donald Trump responded to the lackluster jobs report by directing his team to fire Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, accusing her of manipulating job numbers to help Kamala Harris get elected.
Interesting accusation, since the hiring estimates for last year appeared to show normal estimate variations, and it’s hard to credit summer 2025 revisions with having much influence on either fall 2024 or fall 2028 elections? Jobs chart
In any case, here is a bit on the methodology.
At the beginning of each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (an agency within the Labor Department) releases an estimate of the change in payroll employment for the previous month.
That estimate is based on a monthly survey of about 560,000 businesses selected to represent the millions of employers nationwide.
Specifically, businesses report the total number of people who worked or received pay during the pay period that includes the 12th of the month.
So the BLS essentially polls half a million businesses to come up with their estimates.
There’s just one problem: many businesses haven’t finalized their payroll data in time for the initial release, meaning those early numbers often represent an incomplete snapshot.
To account for this, the BLS issues two subsequent updates — known as revisions — as more businesses submit their data.
The Labor Department’s third estimate, the final revision, is considered the most accurate because it reflects the fullest picture of payroll data available. NewsNation
Get one estimate based on incomplete data, revise when you get better data, revise again when you have a pretty good overall picture. Seems reasonable. But making the President’s economy look bad, whether by intent or just letting the facts fall where there may, will get you reminded that even with a 4 year appointment, you still serve at the President’s pleasure. And he ain’t pleased.
Hopefully someone who follows official GOP releases can confirm or deny the above picture?
When Jalopnik writer Collin Woodard dropped this tweet from the official GOP account into Slack, I had to double check and triple check to see if it was a joke, but nope — that really is a picture of President Trump…
The meme style image bears the watermark of The Daily Signal, a serious conservative news website that clearly does not have an automotive or satirical section, but even so, this is not a retweet from a potentially smarmy site. It’s a full blown post by the official GOP account, a tweet that proudly proclaims “The One Big Beautiful bill will drive the return of the great American car.” Jalopnik
In the past idiots working with politicians have done stupid things, some of which we have lampooned here. I remember some Russian planes mis-IDed as American, foreign ships claimed to be ours, even the most recent in which the Marine’s CSM puked on a medal-bedecked uniform pic before finding out it belonged to a fella named Audie Murphy. Bringing back great American cars? As a bit of a gearhead, I’m all over that idea. Might even have a few suggestions for models to revive (and modern technology to abandon!)
But… that ain’t a great American car. It’s not even an American car. It’s a Lada, one of Communist Russia’s most despised brands, a Fiat with a Slavic accent. Their only claim to fame was not as a POS, but as a relatively hard-to-kill POS (which I guess would have made it a slight improvement over the Fiat 124 it was based on. Whoever chose this car – THAT’S who Trump needs to fire.
Category: Donald Trump, Politics
Don’t be hating on the Fiat 124. My first car was a used Fiat 124 sedan I bought from my father who had bought it new. Its odometer had locked up at 699.9 miles.(By then the Fiat dealer in my home town had gone out of business.) The electrical system had been designed by a telephone engineer. I counted 19 mechanical telephone relays at various locations under the hood.
If the methodology remained unchanged then why fire anyone? Anyone else remember the economy declining multiple quarters in a row triggering the definition of recession and Biden administration denying we were in a recession.
I actually liked driving well maintained Fiats, but as a mechanic in a Fiat dealership I saw very few. Marelli electrical systems were functionally like Lucas systems, with the added bonus that sometimes wires changed color in the middle of a harness for no reason. A wire would go into the harness pink and blue, then come out brown and green – as if they just ran out of the right color.
I bought one of the 124 roadsters in 1971 while I was about to return from the Viet of the Nam. Bought it from Nemet International tax free for only about $3K. I picked it up from a dealership in New Jersey on my way to my new duty station at Ft. Devens, MA. Its quality control was lousy, the headlights didn’t work and I took it back and the dealer found the short and fixed it. I was delighted to sell it a few years later. Then I bought a used 1972 Camaro Z28.
and he lived happily ever after!
I drove a blue Lada in Europe until around 2002. If you went 50kph or faster the thing shuddered and shook like a bomber taking flak over Germany. Also, a “Captain Jack” cassette was stuck in the player — so that was the only music I had.
Those were pretty sad years.
The whole BLS needs re-tooling and a new methodology. During The Auto-pen Regime “The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) revised its job numbers downwards by 818,000 jobs, indicating that the US labor market added fewer jobs than initially reported between April 2023 and March 2024” and it continues happening monthly. I’m a Finance & Accounting guy, and can’t imagine having a job if I told HMFIC that we need to adjust down every month because “Whoopsie” we screwed up…again. Trump is the only POTUS that seems to hold government employees accountable. I’m sure she’s failed her up the ladder of success.
Erika McEntarfered the data.
Never McEntarfer data.
They are squabbling over nothing. Anything under 5% unemployment is essentially full employment in any economy.
The media knows this but when Biden has a recession (two quarters in a row of economic retraction), they redefine recession so that it doesn’t mean that anymore. When the Trump economy has strong economic growth and record high stock markets, these become “warning signs”. And even though Q2 2024 and Q2 2025 growth was almost exactly the same the AP lied and said it was less. It is only important to spread the fear, reality doesn’t have to match.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-economy-warning-signs-financial-numbers-6f9754dbb6b21c9ef5c557b1ebfe6ce9
The picture is obviously photo shop. However someone GOP did put it out there on the GOP website, whoever that person is probably will get fired.
I will point out that there are only a handful of American made cars made by American car companies left. These include various EVs, the Mustang and Corvette and that is it. Everything is else is either foreign or classified as a truck or SUV/ crossover. But Trump was talking specifically about cars.
So imagine the problem the guy who made up the picture had? Trump obviously can’t be in front of an EV as his base has an inexplicable pathological hatred of them. The Corvette was closely associated with Biden marketing, so that leaves the Mustang. Biden’s dad sold Fords back in the day so that is out. So he just picks some random unmarked car and hopes nobody notices, but it’s 2025, and you can’t fool people like that anymore. So he is a dumbass.
The AP should change its name to Associated Propaganda.
I don’t believe there’s such a thing as “car makers” anymore. They’re “assembled” out of parts produced by other companies from all over the world. Frankencars.
In fairness it’s been that way since Henry Ford implemented the assembly line more than a hundred years ago. He correctly determined that an automobile was a much too complicated machine to construct one at a time or to make all the thousands of parts at one factory.
By having an independent factory that specializes in say, tires or headlights, they could produce much more, faster and cheaper. The ready supply of parts greatly sped up production and kept costs low.
I would very much like to have one of the greatest American sportscars, the 1964-65 Ford Shelby AC Cobra. The originals are now over $1 million. But, the reproducton copies are quite affordable. I saw one online for only $45k.