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Trump Advisers Consider Changes to How Government Collects Jobs Data
Officials have weighed new options for data collection, as well as new technologies that could make the process more efficient.
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is considering changes to how the federal government collects and reports jobs data, according to White House officials, following President Trump’s decision to fire the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner earlier this month in the aftermath of weak employment numbers.
In a series of closed-door discussions in recent days, White House aides and Labor Department officials have weighed new options for data collection, as well as new technologies that could make the process more efficient. White House aides said one goal is to improve the response rates to BLS surveys.
Trump has complained publicly and privately that jobs report data is designed to hurt him politically, taking aim at large revisions to the numbers that have complicated his contention that the economy is soaring in his second term. Trump has told his advisers that he doesn’t want large revisions to the data in the future, the officials said.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday that Trump was looking at “means and methods” behind the jobs data.
Any changes to the reports, which are delivered on the first Friday morning of every month, could attract scrutiny that Trump is trying to game the numbers for political purposes. The president has long questioned data that he believes doesn’t align with his worldview. He has also taken steps to assert more control over agencies that historically operate independently and weed out career officials he views as disloyal.
Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer hours after the bureau reported a dramatic downward revision in the number of jobs created in May and June. In July, the economy gained 73,000 jobs, according to BLS, falling short of expectations. Trump said this week that he would nominate E.J. Antoni, a Trump supporter and BLS critic, to replace McEntarfer.
In an interview with Fox News Digital this week, Antoni said BLS should suspend issuing its monthly jobs reports until the process is “corrected.”
“The BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data,” he told Fox News. He added, “Major decision makers from Wall Street to D.C. rely on these numbers, and a lack of confidence in the data has far-reaching consequences.”
A White House official said Antoni conducted the interview earlier this week, before he knew he was going to be chosen as BLS commissioner, and his comments don’t represent official BLS policy. Antoni, an economist for the Heritage Foundation and conservative radio personality, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said Antoni will “prioritize increasing survey response rates and modernizing data collection methods to improve the BLS’s accuracy.”
Former BLS commissioners said Trump’s decision to fire McEntarfer creates a trust problem for the agency and would increase skepticism of any changes made there.
“I think the firing of Erika has made this job even more difficult. You also have to restore trust in the bureau’s product line, whether you agree with Mr. Trump or disagree with him, there is a trust issue now that is square on the table,” said William Beach, who served as BLS commissioner during the first Trump presidency. “It was poor staff work in the White House to not have informed the president that the commissioner doesn’t control the numbers.”
White House officials said they had concerns about jobs reports numbers for months before the firing of McEntarfer. But they didn’t communicate those concerns to her, according to people familiar with the matter.
Stephen Moore, an outside adviser to Trump, said Antoni had been picked because the White House believes the “process is not working.” Moore said he expected the administration to focus on changing how the jobs report is conducted, instead of replacing employees at BLS. “It is more about changing the procedures,” he said.
“But I think we need a monthly jobs report,” he said, adding that he doesn’t think putting it on hold would be a good idea.
Beach said the BLS employees were already deeply concerned about potential interference from the White House in the first term, but such interference didn’t materialize. He said the firing was surprising to him, adding that he didn’t believe any of the revisions were about politics.
The BLS reported a downward revision in the number of jobs created in May and June.
He said tinkering with the numbers for political purposes would undermine credibility on Wall Street and around the world. “I think it would become a public issue very quickly,” he said.
Those who have worked at BLS say there has been a longstanding process for collecting the data. Republicans and Democrats alike have suggested some potential changes that could improve the number of major revisions. In 2023, the BLS and Census Bureau started a multiyear project to update the household survey, hoping to add an online response option by 2027.
Erica Groshen, who led the BLS from 2013 to 2017, said the process for producing the jobs numbers has remained largely unchanged. There are two separate surveys: the household surveys, where about 60,000 households are interviewed monthly, and the surveys of about 120,000 American businesses, including many of the largest ones. Groshen said that depending on the month, various numbers of people responded to the survey.
Some of the businesses reported late, or didn’t report at all, in certain months, but many of the country’s largest companies contributed monthly.
The data was then sent to the BLS for review, with industry experts poring over it before creating the tables that form the report. On Tuesday or Wednesday, the numbers were usually given to the commissioner for an early review. “They were never changed by the commissioner,” she said. A briefing was given on Thursday to the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and to the Labor Secretary on Friday morning before the release.
“It was all amazingly transparent and well-documented, and it was done the same way every month,” she said. “I came to very much appreciate how it was done.”
Groshen said there were discussions at times about changing how the reports were released, and she considered making the reports “livelier” in their narrative format. The agency also considered surveying more frequently to secure better data. But there were never discussions, she said, about changing the formula for the monthly jobs report.
Beach said the agency was already working to modernize the surveys because “they’ve got a rapidly declining response rate, down below 70%.” He agreed with Groshen that if data was collected more frequently from more businesses, there would be fewer large revisions.
But there were other things that cannot be controlled, they both said. “In periods of economic stress, we do see response rates fall in medium and small businesses,” he said.
Groshen said she would support some changes at the agency if they were done in a nonpartisan way.
“There are many ways in which I expect the BLS wants to and will eventually change things,” she said. “They have not been able to do it because they haven’t been funded to do it.”
Write to Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com
