Donald Trump twists timeline of Bureau of Labor Statistics job data revision

The day he fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, President Donald Trump accused the statistical agency, without evidence, of rigging employment numbers to harm him and boost his opponents.

In an Aug. 1 Truth Social post, Trump said, "In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad — Just like when they had three great days around the 2024 Presidential Election, and then, those numbers were ‘taken away’ on November 15, 2024, right after the Election, when the Jobs Numbers were massively revised DOWNWARD, making a correction of over 818,000 Jobs — A TOTAL SCAM."

He’s repeated the statement twice, including during remarks to reporters and again during an Aug. 5 interview with CNBC:

"Days before the election they put out numbers that, it was like the country was on fire, it was doing so well. And then they did a revision about two weeks later, and the revision was down by almost 900,000 jobs. Remember that? What would have happened if I’d lost? They gave phony numbers and they revised them a week and a half later. … The numbers were rigged. Biden wasn’t doing well. He was doing poorly. They announce these phenomenal numbers two days before the election …. Then they did the biggest revision I think in history of almost 900,000 jobs, and it turned out to be more than that because later on they did another revision. So they gave phony numbers in order to win the election. After I won the election … they announced a downward number to bring it back to reality."

Trump has used this assertion to justify his firing of a statistician in a nonpartisan role. But his timeline is wrong, and there is no evidence of partisan rigging.

The agency’s downward revision of 818,000 jobs was part of a standard, annual data-refinement process. It happened Aug. 21, 2024, spoiling Democrats’ mood one day before then-Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the presidential nomination at her party’s convention in Chicago.

The White House did not respond to an inquiry for this article. 

What happened in August 2024

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is staffed by trained civil servants. McEntarfer, the Biden-appointed commissioner confirmed overwhelmingly by the Senate on Jan. 11, 2024 after Trump-appointed commissioner William Beach stepped down, had previously worked in nonpartisan roles at the Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies, the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy and the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

The August 2024 announcement was part of an annual "benchmarking" adjustment process based on a sweep of state-based unemployment insurance data. This is considered more precise than the employer-based data the agency uses to assemble its closely watched monthly employment reports. The agency’s procedures are well-defined and have been used for years. 

Beach, McEntarfer’s predecessor, said after the firing that rigging the numbers is "not possible, and it’s not possible by design."

Using the more precise unemployment insurance data, the agency found that there were 818,000 fewer jobs in March 2024 than had been initially announced. That was the largest downward revision to employment in 15 years, and it prompted some concern among economists that the economy could be weakening. 

Trump lambasted the agency in a Truth Social post that day.

"MASSIVE SCANDAL!" he wrote. "The Harris-Biden Administration has been caught fraudulently manipulating Job Statistics to hide the true extent of the Economic Ruin they have inflicted upon America. New Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the Administration PADDED THE NUMBERS with an extra 818,000 Jobs that DO NOT EXIST, AND NEVER DID."

We rated his claim that the administration had been "caught fraudulently manipulating job statistics" Pants on Fire. 

The adjustment announced Aug. 21, 2024, was preliminary, with a final number, based on complete data, to be released in February 2025. When the agency published that final number, it was a smaller decrease of 589,000, rather than the preliminary decrease of 818,000. (This means Trump was wrong on CNBC when he said the final number was "more than" the original 818,000.)

We also checked the monthly employment revisions published around the time of the 2024 election, in which the agency updates the prior two months’ of preliminary, monthly job figures. Unlike the yearly benchmark revision, these revisions are made every month, and as with the benchmark revisions, the number of jobs can go up or down after the fact.

None of these were close in scale to the 800,000 or 900,000 figures that Trump repeated. The revisions released in November 2024, for the September and October 2024 employment data, ranged from a decrease in 15,000 jobs to a gain of 49,000 jobs. The revisions released in December 2024, for the October and November 2024 employment data, were all increases ranging from 16,000 to 67,000 jobs.

Our ruling

Trump said the job numbers "were rigged" after the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised them "down by almost 900,000 jobs" after the 2024 election.

That’s inaccurate. The agency’s revision was part of a standard, annual review process that happened months before the election. 

The agency’s announcement was dour news for the Biden administration and Harris’ presidential campaign, coinciding with the Democratic National Convention and long before any American had voted. Trump knew about this timing, because he complained about it the same day the revision was released.

We rate the statement Pants on Fire!