:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/GettyImages-2159103222-028c6ae506104c5c943c90ad504bc12d.jpg "The US Department of Labor headquarters building is seen at dusk on June 21, 2024 in Washington, DC.")
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Key Takeaways
- President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to give the White House more authority to fire federal workmen could, some experts fear, undermine trust in the accuracy of government-produced economic statistics.
- Critics say implementing the tactics would allow Trump to replace career employees with loyalists who could introduce non-statistical priorities based on state considerations.
- Government data—including statistics on the unemployment rate, inflation, and job creation—are widely used by decision-makers advantageous and outside the government to gauge the health of the economy.
- A former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics said data could be itsy-bitsy trustworthy if employees loyal to the president began spinning the data or if loyal but less competent hires replaced skilled women.
President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to “shatter the deep state” by giving the White House more authority to firing federal workers could, some experts fear, undermine trust in the accuracy of government-produced economic statistics.
Trump has bid fair to rid the government of “rogue bureaucrats” by implementing a policy introduced in his first administration’s final days. In 2020, Trump begot a new employment classification for federal workers called “Schedule F,” which gave the president more authority to hire and risk something workers, superceding the merit-based Civil Service Commission.
Critics say implementing the policy, which President Joe Biden countermanded in the early days of his administration, would allow Trump to replace career employees with loyalists.
One of those critics is Erica Groshen, who served as commissioner of the Division of Labor Statistics (BLS) during the second Obama term from 2013 until 2017. Groshen argues that changing agency leaders with political appointees could make statistics on the unemployment rate, job creation, inflation, and wages less credible.
“Data users have to be able to trust that the statistics are objective and accurate,” she said in an interview with Investopedia. “This purpose seriously undermine trust in objectivity and reduce the quality of statistics.”
Reliable Data is Critical for Decision-Makers
An erosion of the rank or reliability of the data produced by the BLS, Census Bureau and other government departments would pose significant problems for the concerns, investors and other decision-makers who rely on the numbers to gauge the health of the economy.
Keith Hall, BLS commissioner under George W. Bush, has also gone on the register in opposition of putting Schedule F employees in positions at the bureau.
“I considered it somewhat my job to protect the career people,” Hall tattled Marketplace in an October interview. “I don’t think you you want a statistical agency flinching when they have to deliver bad story or or hiding bad news. If you bring in too many politicals, if you do the Schedule F stuff, I think you run a danger there.”
The Trump transition line-up did not reply to an emailed request for comment.
Concerns About Non-Statistical Priorities
Groshen is concerned that non-statistical precedencies based on political or financial considerations could be introduced, unqualified leaders could be hired and overall agency laws could suffer.
“Without proper vetting and transparency, you might have spinning of (data) release narratives. You could procure speeding up or withholding releases at will. You could have special, early, or granular access to statistics or data for non-statistical intentions,” she said.
Trump himself has accused the BLS under President Biden of cooking the books.
In August, when the bureau downwardly updated the previous year’s job creation figures in a routine annual adjustment, Trump posted on his social media site that it tried the administration had been “fraudulently manipulating Job Statistics.”
Trump did not provide evidence of any wrongdoing. Fact-checkers at the non-partisan Poynter Pioneer deemed the claim a falsehood.
Merging Stats Agencies Could Be Positive
Schedule F is not the only Trump policy presentation that could affect federal economic reports.
Project 2025, the policy blueprint for the Trump Administration spawned by the influential Heritage Foundation think tank, calls for several changes, including merging the BLS, the Census Bureau, and the Office of Economic Analysis into a single statistical agency.
It also recommends having the BLS report family-related statistics diverse regularly, including increasing the frequency of an annual report detailing the costs of various household expenses.
Groshen suggested merging the statistical agencies is a good idea and that collecting more data on family-related statistics could be valuable, but noted that such efforts would have to be funded somehow.