(AFP) – US President Donald Trump on Thursday alleged that jobs data had been “purposely” altered by the government’s commissioner of labor statistics to bolster his predecessor Joe Biden, presenting different figures in the wake of her firing. In the Oval Office, where journalists were convened for a “major” announcement, Trump and economist Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, displayed charts with what they said was the real data.
“This shows that over the last two years of the Biden administration, the BLS overestimated job creation by 1.5 million jobs. Mr. President, that’s a gigantic error,” Moore said. Trump “did the right thing in calling for a new head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” added the economist, a longtime advisor to the Republican president.
“It might not have been an error, that’s the bad part,” Trump said. “I don’t think it’s an error, I think they did it purposely.” According to what Moore called “unpublished census data,” in the first five months of Trump’s new term, the “average median household income adjusted for inflation for the average family in America is already up $1,174.” Trump called that result “incredible.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly revises employment data after its initial publication — both up and down, and sometimes significantly. In early August, it sharply revised down employment growth for May and June — to the tune of 258,000 fewer jobs created. The revision infuriated Trump, who sacked commissioner of labor statistics Erika McEntarfer, who was confirmed in that role in January 2024.
“We had no confidence. I mean the numbers were ridiculous,” Trump told reporters Sunday. In his first term, Trump had wanted to name Moore to the board of the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, but he opted against doing that in the face of criticism of Moore’s qualifications and allegedly sexist comments the economist had made in the past.
© 2024 AFP
