On August 1, 2025 President Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the head of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) since Jan 29, 2024 and a Biden appointee, who officials say was accused of altering job numbers to favor Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and undermine President Trump.

Note the BLS typically applies two revisions to their monthly job number, using a process generally described here (pdf).

“BLS continues to collect outstanding reports from the businesses in the sample as it prepares a second and then a third estimate for the month.” By the time the 3rd estimate is made (aka: the 2nd Revision) approx. 94.6% of businesses have reported their job numbers.

The fundamental question here is whether the revisions for the last three months of Trump’s term were adjusted in a biased way by a Biden-appointed statistician.

The following might help shed light on that question.

Over the past 300 months the average revision to BLS monthly jobs data has been (+/-) 50,000 jobs, with 10 being downward revisions of 100K or more and 21 being upwards revisions of 100K or more. Or, about 10% of the past 300 months of jobs reporting has required substantial revision.

Diving deeper, thanks to an excellent, in-depth article by amuse over at x, we may have a strong clue as to why Biden’s appointee Erika McEntarfer joined the ranks of the unemployed.

My plot of the BLS data published by amuse compares the revisions to the BLS Jobs Report made by the Biden Administration versus revision adjustments made after a review of the data in January 2025 following President Trump’s 2nd inauguration.

(Click to enlarge in the same window)

Now it’s unclear who performed this latest data review, but “The revisions were overwhelmingly downward, concentrated in a specific timeframe that aligned with Biden’s economic messaging crisis.” during 2023 and 2024.

Perhaps even worse, the review of the data during the 2024 Election Year – when McEntarfer was in charge – resulted in results for 8 of the 10 months being revised downwards: Even LESS jobs were created than the “final revision” under Biden.

Of course, naysayers will accuse Trump of gaming the system to justify terminating McEntarter: It’s unknown if she participated in the January 2025 review, so a statement from her would be enlightening. Also, it’s yet unknown if results after November 2024 will undergo 1st and 2nd Revisions.

And so-called “Fact Checkers” have already discounted Trump’s claims, saying such Jobs Reports “are free from political meddling”. Because we all know there’s never any “political meddling” in government

Finally, as the BLS falls within the Executive Branch the head of the Executive – the President – can terminate an employee working for him.

Thanks for reading!