Erika McEntarfer, former commissioner at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is speaking publicly for the first time since President Donald Trump fired her last month after a disappointing jobs report he claimed without evidence had been “rigged.”
“August 1 was like any other first Friday of the month when the job numbers come out, and my quiet and usually obscure little corner the government goes about its business of telling political leaders what these data tell us about the state of the economy,” she said.
“Except by the end of that day, I had been very publicly fired by the president of the United States and was on my way to becoming a household name. It was quite a day to say the least.”
McEntarfer is speaking at an event hosted by the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. The lecture, titled “The Importance of Official Data in Assessing Economic Conditions,” comes as questions swirl about the integrity of government data moving forward, as Trump and members of his administration have sought to gain greater control of the agency and the data it publishes.
This story is developing and will be updated.