U.S. President Donald Trump and his team have, over the past month, tried to present employment data as evidence of manipulation against his administration. However, Friday’s release of the updated employment report put an end to this story: the data underscored the real state of the U.S. labor market.

A month ago, Trump called the July report “fraudulent” and dismissed the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Erika Makentarfer. Subsequently, his team claimed that data collection did not meet standards and that revisions to reports were too dramatic, urging the appointment of a new head for reform. Makentarfer kept her post, yet on Friday’s employment update there was a slowdown in hiring, and the number of jobs in June actually declined for the first time since 2020 – while the revisions the administration pointed to were less dramatic than before.

In short: the employment data cited by the government to justify the accusations did not represent a breakthrough in understanding the economy or evidence of corruption.

How the Bureau of Labor Statistics Works and What It Is Guided By

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was established in 1884 as an independent agency within the U.S. Department of Labor. While the Secretary of Labor has general oversight of the BLS, formal management is provided by the commissioner, who is appointed by the Senate.

The BLS collects a wide range of data that underpin the key economic indicators: inflation, productivity, business costs, wages, workplace injuries, employment, and unemployment.

The most common data come from two sources: the Household Survey and the CES (Current Employment Statistics). The former covers demographics and unemployment through interviews with households, while the latter provides data from thousands of businesses and government agencies: pay, hours worked, and employment counts. Legislation states that participation in the CES is usually voluntary, but many states require businesses to submit data, and Puerto Rico also requires reporting.

In the CES, companies each month submit data on employment and pay for the month by the 12th. The material first undergoes error-checking by contacting employers for clarification. After this, BLS analysts construct the national estimate using seasonal adjustments and reasoned-judgment methods. Confidential aspects of the data are protected to avoid disclosing information about individual companies. The BLS commissioner does not have access to the specific data until the report is released.

As part of the agency’s leadership history, the former BLS commissioner in a previous term emphasized that the protocols prevent data manipulation and safeguard their integrity.

Typically, on the first Friday of each month, the Employment Situation Summary is released – the main monthly U.S. employment report. It is based on two surveys: the Household Survey (demographics and unemployment) and the CES (pay, hours, and changes in employment). The monthly update also includes revisions to previous data for the two preceding months.

The BLS notes its earlier data as preliminary due to possible delays in responses, and later revises the figures, taking into account both new information and seasonal factors. Revisions typically occur several times – over two months after publication, with a final revision in February and a preliminary one in August.

In the July issue, revisions to May and June were significant but standard in scale: changes amounted to several hundred thousand jobs. In August, the revisions were less pronounced: total changes for June were about 27 thousand, and for July – a decrease of 6 thousand, for a total of 33 thousand. Historically, revisions occur due to the data collection method and changes in tax reporting, and since 2003 a modernized sample design has been used.

Interim revisions were more substantial during the pandemic of 2020–2021, when there were sizable adjustments for previous months. Trump repeatedly stated that the 2024 revisions were too small, but federal-level analytics indicate that the difference between preliminary and final data is driven by real corrections from tax filings and other information.

Many companies and government agencies rely on BLS data to guide decisions on investments, compensation, and hiring. The Fed also relies on this data to shape monetary policy. Fed Chair Jerome Powell emphasizes: “Good data help not only the Fed but also the government and the private sector,” adding that accurately reflecting the economy’s production dynamics in real time – more than twenty trillion dollars – is a challenging task, but the United States has remained a world leader in this regard for many years, and that line of leadership should be preserved, in his view.

“Good data help not only the Fed but also the government, and the private sector,” Powell said at a press conference after the latest Fed Board meeting. “It’s very hard to precisely capture in real time the level of the economy’s output above twenty trillion dollars in value, and the U.S. has led in this for a hundred years, and I really think we should continue that, in my view.”

– Jerome Powell

So, despite attempts to use employment data as a political weapon, they did not prove to be evidence of systemic abuse or corruption. The BLS remains a reliable source for assessing the state of the labor market and the overall U.S. economic situation, and the response to the report’s release stood as an example of how data can withstand political pressure and preserve its autonomy.