"I didn’t actually believe I had been fired": former BLS commissioner broke her silence after being dismissed by Trump
McEntarfer commented during the conference that she learned of her dismissal the moment a journalist contacted her to ask her questions about the announcement the president had posted on his Truth Social account, in which he publicly called for her dismissal.
Erika McEntarfer in a file image.
Former Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erika McEntarfer issued her first public statements Tuesday afterbeing fired last August by President Donald Trump, following a disappointing jobs report and major revisions to previous data. During a lecture at Bard College's Levy Institute, McEntarferdetailed what her experience was like after learning of her dismissal, and even warned of the economic consequences that could take place due to her firing.
"August 1 was like any other first Friday of the month when the job numbers come out, and my quiet and usually obscure little corner [of] the government goes about its business of telling political leaders what these data tell us about the state of the economy. Except, by the end of that day, I had been very publicly fired by the president of the United States and was on my way to becoming a household name. It was quite a day, to say the least," the former BLS commissioner noted.
Economy
Wall Street is concerned with the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics chief and questions the accuracy of government data
Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón
Accusations
After firing her, Trump accused McEntarfer of falsifying employment figures, and even suggested that the former commissioner had executed this action in order to hurt him politically. Far from receiving unanimous support, numerous economists both Democrats and Republicans explained that the alleged falsification was impossible to materialize, detailing that revisions to the labor figures are not only routine, but also reflect late reports from employers. "I can vouch for the accuracy and independence of the work of the agency up until the moment I was fired," McEntarfer assured.
Similarly, the former commissioner commented during the conference thatshe learned of her dismissal at the time a journalist contacted her to ask her questions about the announcementthat the president had posted on his Truth Social account, in which he publicly called for her dismissal. "To be honest, I didn’t actually believe I had been fired," confessed McEntarfer, who detailed that, upon checking her e-mail inbox, she found a message sent 20 minutes earlier from the White House informing her that she was "terminated effective immediately."
Warning about his dismissal
"The resulting loss of trust in economic statistics led these countries to worsening economic crises, higher inflation and higher borrowing costs," she said.
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