President Donald Trump’s decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics has left the statistical agency facing a leadership crisis at a time when it already struggles with resource constraints and declining data quality. The dismissal of Commissioner Erika McEntarfer comes after Trump repeatedly claimed without evidence that the BLS “rigged” economic data to make his administration and Republicans look bad.
According to Politico, the agency has spent decades building up firewalls from political interference to preserve public confidence in its economic reports. However, it now faces massive challenges caused by years of declining survey response rates and a hiring freeze imposed by the Trump administration that has raised questions about the quality of its work.
