This article originally appeared in the Financial Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By Philip Cross, August 5, 2025
After last week’s jobs numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a marked slowdown in job growth, Donald Trump fired its head, Erika McEntarfer, claiming “the numbers were phoney” and the process “rigged” to make his economic record look bad.
Superficially, it may seem Trump has a case. Although July job growth of 70,000 was close to expectations, unusually large revisions essentially wiped out most gains in the previous two months. Trump’s paranoia about the Washington bureaucracy no doubt reflects lingering memories of how in his first term some government officials openly created “The Resistance” to frustrate his actions — not to mention how 95 per cent of D.C. voters opposed him in 2024.
But it’s simply not believable that the jobs data are being manipulated to undermine Trump’s agenda. To start with, 0.4 per cent employment growth in his first seven months is not significantly different from the 0.6 per cent gain in the past seven months of the Biden/Harris administration — which Trump claims was inflated. The slight slowdown under Trump is understandable given: the massive uncertainty surrounding his erratic plans for tariffs; the DOGE job cuts, which doubtless had something to do with a decline in government jobs that was the chief source of weakness over the past three months; and the (until July) uncertain fate of his fiscal stimulus package in Congress. In quarterly earnings reports, many firms cite uncertainty as a factor in their decision to curtail hiring plans.
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Philip Cross is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
