Fox Business host Charles Payne called the collection of economic data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) “terrible” and “antiquated” Monday, saying President Donald Trump was right to fire the head of the agency.
Trump fired Commissioner of Labor Statistics Erika McEntarfer following a worse-than-expected July jobs report that also included substantial downward revisions for May and June. Payne erupted after “Fox and Friends” guest co-host Sandra Smith played a clip of Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla demanding an investigation into McEntarfer’s firing.
“President Trump is essentially saying after that jobs report on Friday that revealed this massive to the prior months’ data, saying, there’s too many errors here, this person is getting it wrong, we need new blood in there. Do you agree?” Smith asked Payne. “A thousand percent,” Payne responded. “Now remember, we had the FOMC meeting, the Fed got together last Wednesday, two members of the Fed wanted to cut rates.”
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“Now, Chris Waller, I just gotta share with the audience, he gave a speech on July 17th for cutting rates. He said three things,” Payne continued. “First, tariffs are one-off, a price level does not cause inflation. Second, the host of data right now argues that monetary policy should be neutral, not restrictive. Third, my final reason to cut is because the labor market looks fine on the surface once, but once we account for expected data revisions, like we got on Friday, he knew it was going to be weak. If he knew, this Powell knew this. If he knew this, the person in charge of data knew this. Everyone knows this.”
Waller, who is seen as a potential replacement for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, gave a speech July 17 at New York University on the economic outlook, saying that the economy appeared to be slowing and that job growth was stalling.
The Biden administration admitted in August 2024 that it overestimated job creation by over 800,000 jobs.
“I have talked about this for well over a year on my show this data is terrible, it’s antiquated. We know how many people took a plane in the country yesterday. We put out credit card data on a daily basis. We know what’s happening with high-frequency data,” Payne continued. “Why are we waiting for things to be revised for 90 days to make – by the way, this representative, people in this district should be pissed at him because you are saying you are arguing for restrictive policies that hurt middle class, that hurt poor people.”
“Credit card interest rates are going through the roof. People can’t buy a house. If that’s how – if he is comfortable with this – his constituents being in that situation, fine,” Payne continued. “In the real world, when things are this bad for this long, people get fired. That’s the reality of life, you get fired.”
Trump and Powell have clashed over the Fed’s failure to lower interest rates, with Trump nicknaming Powell “Too Late” over the Fed chairman’s refusal to cut rates.
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