Donald Trump demanded the firing of a top Joe Biden official overseeing the country’s ‘jobs numbers’ after a lackluster report.

The president is expressing his frustration towards Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of labor statistics, who was appointed to this role by former President Joe Biden.

He accused her of ‘falsifying’ employment figures ahead of the 2024 election to ‘enhance Kamala’s prospects of winning,’ in a scathing post on Truth Social that lacked evidence for such a serious claim.

‘We require accurate employment data. I have instructed my team to dismiss this Biden political appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified,’ he declared.

Hiring growth dropped dramatically last month and unemployment ticked up, the latest jobs report released on Friday showed.

Nonfarm payrolls added 73,000 in July, far lower than the 100,000 expected by analysts. The unemployment rate also ticked up to 4.2 percent.

The report also sharply revised down the figures for May and June by a combined 258,000 jobs from the previously released figures.

Hiring growth dropped dramatically last month and unemployment ticked up, the latest jobs report released on Friday showed

Trump has targeted Fed Chair Jerome Powell calling him ‘too late’ on lowering interest rates

The president is taking out his frustration on Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of labor statistics

Following the revision June’s total was left at just 14,000 and May’s at 19,000 — effectively flat. Analysts say July’s figure is also likely to be revised lower, possibly into negative territory.

Trump hammered the economist for those revisions, although they are routine in the government’s monthly job reports – sometimes going up, sometimes going down as businesses around the country report on their payrolls. 

Stocks tumbled in pre-market trading with the S&P 500 down around one percent, and the Nasdaq down around 1.1 percent before the bell.

The latest figures suggest cracks are in fact starting to show up in the economy, despite a slew of previous better-than-expected economic data released recently.

It comes after the Federal Reserve once again held rates steady at its July meeting on Wednesday.

The weaker figures could incentivize the Fed to lower interest rates at its next meeting in September.

Trump has targeted Fed Chair Jerome Powell calling him ‘too late’ on lowering interest rates. 

‘Too Little, Too Late. Jerome “Too Late” Powell is a disaster. DROP THE RATE!’ the president wrote on Truth Social following the report’s release. 

That came days after Powell invoked Trump’s tariffs as beginning to impact inflation –which would undermine Trump’s push as his ‘liberation day’ tariffs went into effect.  

‘Higher tariffs have begun to show through more clearly to prices of some goods, but their overall effects on economic activity and inflation remain to be seen,’ Powell told reporters.

‘A reasonable base case is that the effects on inflation could be short-lived—reflecting a one-time shift in the price level. But it is also possible that the inflationary effects could instead be more persistent, and that is a risk to be assessed and managed,’ Powell said.

According to her LinkedIn bio, McEntarfer previously served as an economist at the Census Bureau and at the Treasury Department, as well as working as a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisors for a year during the Biden administration.

Her bio statement is a dry statement filled with economics lingo. ‘My research is focused on labor market dynamics and interactions between firms and workers in the economy and has been published in the Journal of Labor Economics, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives,’ she writes.  

‘I have spent over 20 years as a professional economist working on issues related to economic measurement and innovations in workforce data,’ she states.

Trump’s post reeled off adjustments to monthly jobs reports and suggested without evidence that numbers might be ‘manipulated’ for political reasons.

‘This is the same Bureau of Labor Statistics that overstated the Jobs Growth in March 2024 by approximately 818,000 and, then again, right before the 2024 Presidential Election, in August and September, by 112,000. These were Records — No one can be that wrong?’ Trump wrote.

‘McEntarfer said there were only 73,000 Jobs added (a shock!) but, more importantly, that a major mistake was made by them, 258,000 Jobs downward, in the prior two months.’

He said similar things happened in the first part of the hear ‘always to the negative.’ 

It is just the latest example of Trump demanding that even traditionally independent parts of the government bend do his preferences – although a president who is denied bad information about the unemployment situation would be deprived timely information to change course for their own political benefit.