Trump’s decision to fire BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer unfolded after the agency released July jobs numbers and issued large revisions for May and June, lowering payroll gains by a combined 258,000 in those two months—the biggest such revision since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic during spring 2020.

White House officials on Sunday defended President Trump’s decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) following a weak jobs report, a move that has sparked broad criticism. “The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers,