Economists say unbiased data is essential for policymaking, and for democracy.
News Analysis: In firing the head of the agency that collects labor statistics, President Trump underscored his tendency to suppress facts he doesn't like and promote his own version of reality. nyti.ms/3IYnoNF[image or embed]
-- The New York Times (@nytimes.com) Aug 3, 2025 at 1:28 PM
[1] www.axios.com
[2] www.reddit.com
[3] www.bls.gov
[4] www.americascreditunions.org
[5] www.bloomberg.com
[6] www.bls.gov
[7] www.reuters.com
[8] www.cnbc.com
[9] abcnews.go.com
[10] www.nbcnews.com
We saw how pretending inflation wasn't real worked last election cycle. Hopefully that won't change.
Trust in US economic data on the line: Easy to lose, hard to restore
www.reuters.com
... Donald Trump's move to fire the head of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has put trust in U.S. data reporting mechanisms on the line just as demand for reliable diagnoses of the health of the world's largest economy is bigger than ever.
Examples from elsewhere show credibility is easily lost and hard to restore.
A first test will be the choice to replace Erika McEntarfer, accused without evidence by Trump of manipulating U.S. job numbers after weaker-than-expected growth and large downward revisions were reported last week.
"Imagine if one of your concerns is that there's a lackey in charge of the agency and the numbers are fake," said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, of an appointment Trump has said to expect within days.
"That's a whole other level of problems."
Policymakers, businesses and investors are scrambling to understand how Trump's attempt to up-end the global trade system will affect prices, employment and household wealth. Central banks, which once tried to guide market bets on rate moves months down the line, now say decisions are "data-dependent."
The rub is that data collection is proving to be harder. Debt-laden governments have, as McEntarfer experienced, cut resources in their data departments; phone surveys, the go-to method for much macro research, are struggling to produce adequate samples as many households do without fixed lines.
Trump's implicit accusation of partisanship by "this Biden Political Appointee" adds the troubling factor of a political dimension usually indicative of countries dogged by wider doubts over their democratic checks and balances.
The key lesson from past examples of loss of data confidence is that it can take years for trust to be restored. ...
Trump says he doesn't trust the jobs data, but Wall Street and economists do
apnews.com
... The monthly jobs report is already closely-watched on Wall Street and in Washington but has taken on a new importance after President Donald Trump on Friday fired the official who oversees it.[emphasis mine]
Trump claimed that June's employment figures were "RIGGED" to make him and other Republicans "look bad," yet he provided no evidence. ...
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