We got some really bad economic news this week. GDP grew at just a 1.2 percent annual rate over the first half of the year. Also, it looks like the strong productivity growth of the Biden years is coming to an end. At the same time, inflation is rising, running at a 3.0 percent annual rate in the core Personal Consumption Expenditure deflator favored by the Fed.

Then today we found out that the labor market is just limping along, adding an average of just 35,000 jobs a month in the last three months. Wage growth has slowed somewhat overall, with a sharper slowing for low-paid restaurant workers. And the unemployment rate for Black workers is rising towards recession levels at 7.2 percent. 

The weakness in the economy is not surprising given Donald Trump’s erratic tariff policies, his cutbacks in spending in many areas, and his attacks on universities. These are antics that might make for great reality TV, but they are not a good way to run an economy.

Anyhow, now that the problems with his policies are becoming clearer, Trump took the obvious step, fire the person in charge of producing the data. While I don’t know her personally, Erika McEntarfer, the BLS commissioner, is a very competent economist who was doing her job as best she could. 

I’m sure that Trump has no idea of how difficult it is to track a $30 trillion economy with 170 million workers, but it is in fact very complicated. Numbers like the unemployment rate or job growth don’t just appear on paper. They are computed based on massive surveys, which have to be adjusted for people who don’t respond, seasonal factors, and other issues. The process is never perfect, but McEntarfer and BLS do the best they can.

They also are as transparent as possible about how they calculate these data. They produce extensive reams of documents describing their methods. They also constantly do research to find ways to improve their methods. 

And BLS is also open for input from outsiders. In fact, they used to have unpaid advisory boards, one from business and one from labor, that provided feedback and called attention to problems with the data. DOGE eliminated these advisory boards back in March, ostensibly to improve efficiency. Trump’s cuts to BLS staff have also reduced the quality of the data.

Anyhow, the important point that everyone should know is that there is no individual who spits out a number for the unemployment rate or job growth. There are surveys and procedures that generate the number, sort of like spinning a roulette wheel will generate a number where the ball drops. 

If Trump or one of his staffers believe that some of the procedures are faulty, they can lay out their reasons for BLS, and the public at large, and their argument can be evaluated. But yelling “FAKE NUMBERS” is not a way to improve the data. 

The nature of Trump’s complaint of political bias is bizarre not only because he has no evidence, but also because it makes no sense. In his tirade Trump pointed to the downward revision of 818,000 jobs last August in the annual benchmark revision to the BLS establishment survey. Trump seems to think that McEntarfer and BLS had inflated the jobs numbers previously to make Biden, and then Harris, look good.

The problem with the Trump story should be pretty obvious. If they were lying about the jobs numbers, why would they make a huge downward revision just over two months before the election? If they were trying to help Harris, who was the Democratic candidate at that point, wouldn’t it have made sense to wait until after the election?

The basic story here is that there is literally nothing to Trump’s claims. He doesn’t like the data about the economy because they show his policies are a disaster. Rather than re-examine his policies, he wants to change the data, and he will try to find people who give him the data he wants.

The United States’s statistical agencies produced gold standard economic data for decades. This is not just something that economists like me appreciate. Businesses planning investment need to know what is going on in the economy and in the particular sectors where they are operating. Individuals also need these data to make decisions about things like whether it is a good time to change jobs or whether getting more education is a good investment. 

Unfortunately, because Donald Trump can’t take the truth, he is planning to destroy a great national asset that took decades to build up. This certainly is change.