the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Aug 4, 2025
Only hours after the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly jobs report, President Trump fired the head of the agency, Erika McEntarfer. Trump said she was trying to make him look bad.
The job numbers did look bad. In the whole country, the report said, only 73,000 non-farming jobs were created in July when, each month, about ten times as many people enter the U.S. workforce. But even more damaging to Trump’s claims of “the economy doing great” was the BLS’s revision of its May and June figures. The real number of jobs created during those two months, the agency said, was actually 33,000, instead of the originally reported 291,000—an 89% drop, that is!
The jobs numbers are revised every month because the BLS announces them on the first Friday of each month—too soon, really, to come up with precise numbers. So, the monthly jobs figure is an estimate—usually an estimate higher than the actual number, since the BLS also is inclined to make things look rosier than they are.
Look at the “official” unemployment figure, for example, which the BLS also announces. This figure leaves out millions of people—like the people who are not actively seeking work because they have given up; or the people who work part-time but want a full-time job and can’t find it; or the people who can’t work because they have to take care of children or elderly relatives, or because they are in prison.… It’s a long list—and the BLS simply doesn’t count them.
But workers know what the job situation in the real world is, anyway. The fact that jobs are hard to come by; that jobs that are available don’t pay enough to cover the cost of living; and that millions of people work two, sometimes even three jobs just to pay for rent and necessities.
So, as the crisis deepens for the working class, Trump wants federal officials to paint even rosier pictures—tell even bigger lies, that is. But it’s not just him. Trump may be more crass than other elected officials. But in the end all these politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, do the same thing: they lie to the working class on behalf of the big capitalists they represent.