Donald Trump’s contentious decision to fire the U.S. statistics chief has done little to stem an economic slump, with the latest jobs report showing only 22,000 jobs were added in August - well below expectations. One month after Trump sacked the Bureau of Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer in response to weak job numbers, the unemployment rate rose to 4.3 per cent, the highest since 2021.
Everyone in the department has been pretty clear that the director has no real way to influence the numbers. I suppose they could just release a fake document, but that wouldn’t be very tenable in the long term.
Why else would the director be replaced? No other reason seems feasible – he didn’t like the true answer.
Because he’s an idiot and assumed the next director can make the change.
Shooting the messenger has a long, sordid history.
They can push for things like altered definitions and thresholds, etc, even if they’re not authorized to pick their own numbers directly, etc.
What does this really mean though?
The same could be said of any democratic institution, of course the director doesn’t have any way to influence the reporting they produce because it’s all supposed to be transparent and reliable.
In reality though, in the Trump admin, they can absolutely manipulate the numbers in a myriad of ways.
That’s certainly not going to stop them from trying.