MNI INTERVIEW: Ex-Chief Says BLS Can Withstand Trump Pressure

Aug-01 23:23By: Evan Ryser

Federal Reserve

The public can trust that the Bureau of Labor statistics will continue to produce gold-standard, scientifically-produced numbers, even amid pressure from President Donald Trump and continuing funding challenges, ex-BLS Commissioner William Beach told MNI Friday.

"I have every reason to believe that these numbers will be as good as they are right right now, gold standard numbers, best produced in the world, as long as they [BLS] have the budget to do so. It won't be the personnel issues involved here. It will be a budgetary issue," said Beach, who served as BLS commissioner under Trump in his first term.

Even if Trump picks a radical person to lead the BLS and they are confirmed by the Senate, Beach expects the BLS to withstand such a person. "There's no way for political manipulation of these numbers to occur. The commissioner doesn't see the numbers until the numbers are there and have been loaded into the computers for distribution. That's Wednesday prior to the Friday release."

HONEST

President Trump said the Friday jobs report was "rigged" and he said he has "three very good" people in mind for the job. "I put somebody in who is gonna be honest. That's all we want," he said.

BLS commissioner, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, appointed by Joe Biden, was confirmed by the Senate in January last year in an 86-8 vote. Among the bipartisan group that voted for McEntarfer was current-Vice President JD Vance.

A White House official and a BLS official confirmed McEntarfer has been fired. BLS said Deputy Commissioner William Wiatrowski will serve as Acting Commissioner for BLS.

Beach, who Trump nominated as BLS commissioner in 2017, is advocating Congress to take steps to strengthen the position so that it would be harder for a president to fire a BLS commissioner. "The President has the right. Does the President want to exercise that right? That's the question that's always been asked and answered in the negative until now."

PROCEDURES

In the meantime, BLS procedures are designed to be decentralized to avoid opportunities for interference and "certainly can" withstand such one new leader and can continue to produce gold-standard labor market indicators, Beach said.

For the Employment Situation Report, BLS staffers work in independent groups where data is collected and processed before their work is combined by about 40 people into a single collection. The report is then written by about five people, Beach said.

"At no point in this whole process does the commissioner see anything. It doesn't see the original data, the process data, the research that goes into it, the writing of the report, until the report is ready to essentially go out," he said. "There is one moment where the commissioner can see the draft final report, but all the numbers are locked in. And I can tell you, as commissioner, I was not allowed to change very many words, and they were pretty suspicious if I tried to change a word."

"It's very difficult for me to imagine how anybody could think that that system would be subject to political interference. It's really been designed to thwart any effort in that direction," Beach said. He was confident that top-tier employment reports will continue to receive the attention needed, even if Congress squeezes funding to statistical agencies. (See: MNI INTERVIEW: US Data Already Suffering From Underinvestment)

"BLS is a big enough organization that can move resources from lower priority to higher priority," Beach said. "There's dozens of reports BLS does, but seven of them are required by Congress to always be done, come hell or high water. I don't think that those reports are at risk right now."

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