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The Labor Department’s internal watchdog said Wednesday it has opened an investigation into how jobs and inflation data is collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The probe by the department’s Office of Inspector General comes as BLS is under pressure from the Trump administration, which has pointed to recent downward revisions to employment data to argue that the agency’s data cannot be trusted.
President Donald Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer in August, accusing her of being motivated by politics hours after her agency released a weak monthly jobs report.
The inspector general is a nonpolitical appointee whose office is independently staffed and legally insulated from interference by the Labor secretary or other political appouintees. The office is currently being led by acting deputy Inspector General Michael Mikulka, according the Labor Department’s website.
In a letter sent Wednesday morning, the watchdog said it “is initiating a review of the challenges” that BLS “encounters collecting and reporting closely watched economic data.”
The OIG said it was initiating that probe after BLS announced a reduction in its data collection for two key inflation metrics, the consumer price index and the producer price index.
The review also comes in light of BLS recently issuing a “large downward revision of its estimate of new jobs in the monthly Employment Situation Report,” assistant inspector general for audit Laura Nicolosi wrote.
The Labor Department in a preliminary report Tuesday revised jobs data sharply downward for the year ending March 2025, posting a drop of 911,000 from initial estimates. The revisions were the largest on record in more than two decades.
Nicolosi wrote Wednesday that the OIG’s “focus will be on the challenges and related mitigating strategies for (1) collecting PPI and CPI data, and (2) collecting and reporting, including revising, monthly employment data.”
The letter was addressed to William Wiatrowski, who has served as BLS’ acting commissioner since Trump fired McEntarfer on Aug. 1, hours after BLS issued a weaker-than-expected monthly jobs report for July.
The move stunned some experts, who warned that it undermined confidence in the integrity of the financial statistics that are heavily relied upon by investors and policymakers alike.
But Trump and his supporters defended McEntarfer’s removal, arguing that BLS’ data had become increasingly unreliable and claiming its actions were politicized.
They have pointed to previous large revisions by the agency, though Trump has mischaracterized those figures and when they were released.
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said Tuesday that the BLS’ latest downward revision “gives the American people even more reason to doubt the integrity of data being published.”
“It’s imperative for the data to remain accurate, impartial, and never altered for political gain,” DeRemer said.
— CNBC’s Greg Iacurci contributed to this report.
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