President Donald Trump is doubling down on his conspiracy theory that the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs reports are being rigged, rather than dealing with the damage his tariff policies are causing.
“Last weeks Job’s Report was RIGGED, just like the numbers prior to the Presidential Election were Rigged,” Trump wrote on Monday on his Truth Social platform. “That’s why, in both cases, there was massive, record setting revisions, in favor of the Radical Left Democrats. Those big adjustments were made to cover up, and level out, the FAKE political numbers that were CONCOCTED in order to make a great Republican Success look less stellar!!!”
Friday’s jobs report showed that following the implementation of Trump’s haphazard tariff policy, only 73,000 jobs were added in July—far below the expected 110,000. The BLS also revised the previous two jobs reports down by 253,000 jobs total. The report has increased fears of a recession and a repeat of Trump’s failed economic policies from his first term.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman noted that the jobs data is now confirming earlier warnings about the tariff policies.
“The thing is, official economic data are basically starting to confirm what mainstream economists have been saying all along. Erratic policy that creates uncertainty depresses growth and job creation; tariffs raise prices,” Krugman wrote.
Following the dismal jobs report, Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday. Over the weekend, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and tried to justify the purge, baselessly claiming there “have been a bunch of patterns that could make people wonder.”
But this is nonsense.
As statistician and election analyst Nate Silver noted, “Each monthly payrolls figure is actually revised three times: once in each of the first two months after initial publication (so July’s 73,000 figure will be re-reported in August and then again in September) and then again each January as part of the BLS’s annual benchmark revisions.”
Similarly, Politifact noted that “revisions are a standard part of the BLS process.”
In other words, Trump just doesn’t like the way the wind is blowing.
William Beach, who served as the BLS commissioner during Trump’s first term, signed on to a letter with Obama-era commissioner Erica Groshen, calling Trump’s firing decision “baseless.”
“To politicize the work of the agency and its workers does a great disservice not only to BLS but to the entire federal statistical system which this country has relied on for almost 150 years,” they wrote.
Trump’s lies about the jobs report echo his long-debunked falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election, which he decisively lost against former President Joe Biden. And like with Trump’s election denialism, congressional Republicans and right-wing media like Fox News and Fox Business are amplifying and repeating Trump’s conspiracy. This has been standard operating procedure for the right for decades—promoting and escalating nonsensical conspiracies, leading to the eventual rise of a conspiracy theorist like Trump leading the party.
Trump’s tariffs are hurting the recovering economy he inherited from Biden. He has nobody to blame but himself, and he is just trying to lie his way out of another mess.