The administration argues Commissioner Erika McEntarfer was removed for incompetence, but the most avid consumers of the agency’s data — top economists and key figures on Wall Street — worry it was because Trump did not like what that data said.

But that is akin to what President Donald Trump did on Friday when he fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics a few hours after she released a disappointing jobs report and published revisions to earlier reports that had made the labor market look stronger than it was during the spring.

President Donald Trump’s dismissal of Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer is a disastrous “cure” for an imagined problem. It severely damages the credibility of the BLS and all federal statistical agencies,

Trump defended his decision to fire Erika McEntarfer, the official overseeing jobs statistics, telling CNBC that data showing a hiring slowdown was political.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' data does more than capture monthly job growth and inflation pressures_; it plays a crucial role in Americans’ financial lives, say Joe Pinsker, Heather Gillers and Ash