A guide to fixing the US jobs data problem

Controversial call: The Department of Labor Building in Washington. The US administration has continued to defend the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer over a weaker-than-expected jobs report last week. — AFP

President Donald Trump started a firestorm over the reliability of US economic data when he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) following the agency’s July non-farm payrolls report.

The report wiped 258,000 jobs that were previously counted in May and June, the largest downward revision in decades outside of the Covid pandemic.