“The president’s belief that the BLS commissioner personally ‘produced’ the jobs numbers is preposterous and shows a complete misunderstanding of how government statistical agencies operate,” noted Heidi Shierholz, the president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Department of Labor, in a post about McEntarfer’s firing.
She added, “These data are the product of careful work by hundreds of expert economists, statisticians and civil servants following transparent, well-established methodologies.”
CBS Moneywatch
August 5, 2025
“To me, today’s jobs report is what entering a recession looks like,” Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, wrote after the Friday report.
CNBC
August 5, 2025
Black women in particular have seen a dramatic increase in unemployment over the past year, from 5.5% to 6.3%. Certain states are also seeing exceptionally high unemployment rates for Black people, with some, including Michigan, hovering near 10%, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
USA Today
August 5, 2025
Cites Federal Policywatch post: “Trump fires 17 Inspectors General”: https://www.epi.org/policywatch/trump-fires-17-inspectors-general/
Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
August 4, 2025
Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute , a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank, noted in a blog post that “the law is designed to trigger a massive redistribution of income to the wealthy,” not to benefit the working class, as the Trump administration claims.
Univision
August 4, 2025
“The economy runs on reliable data,” said Economic Policy Institute President Heidi Shierholz, a former Labor Department economist who served in the administration of President Barack Obama. “Businesses use these numbers to decide whether to hire or expand. The Federal Reserve uses them to set interest rates. State and local governments use them to plan budgets. If policymakers and the public can’t trust the data – or suspect the data are being manipulated – confidence collapses and reasonable economic decision-making becomes impossible. It’s like trying to drive a car blindfolded.”
U.S. News & World Report
August 4, 2025
Heidi Shierholz, the Labor Department’s chief economist from 2014 to early 2017 during President Barack Obama’s administration, said the charge from Trump “is outrageous and shows a total misunderstanding of how government statistical agencies work” to compile data, she said.
USA Today
August 4, 2025
Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist of the Department of Labor and now the president of the Economic Policy Institute, told the Post that firing a nonpartisan analyst for merely reporting bad news was “straight out of an autocratic playbook.”
She told the Post, “If policymakers and the public can’t trust the data — or suspect the data are being manipulated — confidence collapses and reasonable economic decision-making becomes impossible. It’s like trying to drive a car blindfolded.”
Poynter
August 4, 2025
Only 8% of Ohio families can afford infant care, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Spectrum News 1
August 4, 2025
Trump, on the other hand, during his second term, inherited “unquestionably the strongest economy” in more than two decades, per the Economic Policy Institute, particularly because of the US economy’s rebound compared with peer nations.
Al Jazeera
August 4, 2025