Trump's Bid To Fire BLS Commissioner 'Preposterously Stupid And Deeply Dangerous'

Source: HuffPost

Trump’s Bid To Fire BLS Commissioner ‘Preposterously Stupid And Deeply Dangerous’

"There is absolutely no chance that the BLS commissioner manipulated the jobs and unemployment data to hurt Donald Trump," a former labor official says.

By Dave Jamieson and Jennifer Bendery
Aug 1, 2025, 04:54 PM EDT
|Updated Aug 1, 2025

President Donald Trump’s decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he didn’t like Friday’s jobs report is a terrible idea that will undermine the public’s confidence in the government’s economic data, a former labor official said.

“It’s preposterously stupid and deeply dangerous for our economy,” Seth Harris, who served as the deputy labor secretary under former President Barack Obama, told HuffPost.

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“There is absolutely no chance that the BLS commissioner or anyone else at BLS manipulated the jobs and unemployment data to hurt Donald Trump politically,” said Harris, now a law professor at Northeastern University.

“Donald Trump produced these bad job and unemployment numbers with his policies,” he said. “It’s not the people counting the jobs — it’s the guy who’s overseeing the economy.”

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Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-firing-bls-commissioner-stupid_n_688d2290e4b022644fdf3079