By Michael Bitzer
On Friday, August 1, after what most described as a lackluster employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that showed only 77,000 jobs were added to the economy, with the unemployment rate at 4.2 percent, President Donald Trump directed that the BLS commissioner, who oversees the data gather and statistics reporting, be removed.
In doing so, Trump stated "'In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.'"
Government statistics and data have traditionally been seen as apolitical--collecting and reporting as best as the government agency can, with traditionally adjustments with further data provided to previous months. A core belief is that government-researched and produced data is free from political influence.
Friday's BLS Employment Situation Summary report is one of thousands of government reports that track a variety of topics and issues in American society, produced typically by non-partisan experts and provided to the public and policy makers to help inform, understand, and ground debates around facts.
In its Survey of American Democracy, the June 2025 Catawba-YouGov Survey of 1,000 North Carolinians asked about the importance of a variety of principles to American democracy, one of them being how North Carolinians viewed the importance of "Government statistics and data are produced by experts who are not influenced by political considerations."
