After the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a worse-than-expected US jobs report, President Trump fired the agency’s head, Erika McEntarfer, claiming her numbers were ‘wrong’ and manipulated. There’s no evidence this was the case but many agree gathering reliable data on the health of the economy is getting harder. The FT’s chief data reporter, John Burn-Murdoch, discusses why that’s happening and what to do about it with Erica Groshen, the former BLS commissioner.

Clip: NBC

Further Reading:

US labour data agency was teetering even before Donald Trump fired its chief

Trump’s war on data will do lasting harm

Donald Trump’s attack on US labour statistics agency spooks investors

John Burn-Murdoch is the FT’s chief data reporter. You can find his articles here

Subscribe to The Economics Show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.

Presented by John Burn-Murdoch. Produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music from Breen Turner, and sound design by Jean-Marc Eck.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.