Kevin Hassett came out swinging this weekend to defend President Donald Trump’s decision to can Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erika McEntarfer — and he’s framing it as a matter of trust, not politics.
On NBC’s Meet the Press, Hassett pointed to the massive job revisions that have made headlines in recent months, including one particularly eyebrow-raising change: an 818,000-job downward revision to Biden-era numbers that came out conveniently after Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. “There have been a bunch of patterns that could make people wonder,” Hassett said, arguing that these revisions are “hard evidence” that something at BLS isn’t adding up.
“There was an 818,000 [downward] revision making the Joe Biden job record a lot worse that came out AFTER he withdrew,” says National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett on jobs numbers.
“It’s the President’s highest priority that the data be trusted.” pic.twitter.com/6Fhuqe97B8
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 3, 2025
Trump made his move Friday after the latest jobs report showed the U.S. added only 73,000 jobs last month — way under expectations — while also slashing previous months’ numbers. McEntarfer, a Biden appointee, was out by the end of the day.
Of course, critics are howling. William Beach, a former BLS commissioner, told CNN that firing McEntarfer undermines confidence in the agency, insisting the BLS is “doing a better job now than they did 20 or 30 years ago” and warning that the move “really hurts the statistical system.” He added that any new commissioner will now face automatic suspicion of political influence.
Hassett wasn’t having that. On Fox News Sunday, he pushed back against the idea that Trump’s decision was authoritarian or based on personal dislike of the data. “When the data are unreliable, when they keep being revised all over the place, then there are going to be people that wonder if there’s a partisan pattern in the data,” he said.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett on jobs numbers: “When the data are unreliable, when they keep being revised all over the place, then there are going to be people that wonder if there’s a partisan pattern in the data.” pic.twitter.com/ORjx0WgLcz
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 3, 2025
He went further, criticizing the agency’s lack of transparency: “If I were running the BLS… and I had the biggest downward revision in 50 years, I would have a really, really detailed report explaining why it happened so that everybody really trusted the data. But instead, they have this little black box that moves the numbers around and makes people wonder.”
In other words, Hassett’s framing this as a housecleaning — a “fresh set of eyes” to restore confidence in the numbers.
