I was the US labor secretary. Trump’s latest firing undermines a key agency

‘How can anyone in the future trust the information that emerges from the Bureau of Labor Statistics when the person in charge of the agency has to come up with data to Trump’s liking in order to stay in the job?’ Photograph: US Bureau of Labor Statistics/Reuters

I spent much of the 1990s as the secretary of labor. One unit of the labor department is the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I was instructed by my predecessors as well as by the White House, and by every labor economist and statistician I came in contact with, that one of my cardinal responsibilities was to guard the independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.