Dept. of Labor launches investigation into data collection process at BLS

By Elisabeth Buchwald, CNN

(CNN) — The Department of Labor is initiating an investigation into how the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects and reports “closely watched economic data,” according to a letter the department’s Assistant Inspector General for Audit, Laura Nicolosi, sent to Acting BLS Commissioner William Wiatrowski on Wednesday.

This comes one day after the BLS said there were nearly 1 million fewer people employed for the year ended in March than previously reported as part of the agency’s annual revisions.

Nicolosi, who was appointed shortly before President Donald Trump took office this year, didn’t mention the revisions in her letter but cited concerns stemming from a recent “large downward revision” of new jobs added, as reported in monthly employment reports.

Last month, Trump fired Erika McEntarfer from her position as BLS commissioner after the agency reported a combined 258,000 downward revision to May and June hiring numbers. Trump accused McEntarfer, without evidence, of manipulating the monthly jobs reports for “political purposes.”

While McEntarfer hasn’t publicly commented on her firing, prominent left and right-leaning economists have voiced concerns about it, saying it could result in the agency publishing politically biased data despite its long-standing independence from outside influence. E.J. Antoni, Trump’s pick to replace McEntarfer, has added to the concerns given his closeness with the president as well as his position at the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and contributions to Project 2025.

While members of the Trump administration said on Tuesday that the annual revisions are a sign that the president inherited a worse economy from former President Joe Biden, they’ve also said that it’s proof that changes need to be made at the BLS to improve the accuracy of data.

Tuesday’s revisions, while unusually large, don’t mean previously reported monthly employment figures were inaccurate, however. Rather, they were simply the best estimates at that time using the information available to the BLS.

Every year, the BLS conducts a revision to the data from its monthly survey of businesses’ payrolls and it benchmarks the March employment level to those measured by the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.