Erika McEntarfer
Erika McEntarfer | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2024 | |
| 16th Commissioner of Labor Statistics | |
| In office January 29, 2024 – August 1, 2025 | |
| President | |
| Preceded by | William Beach |
| Succeeded by | Brett Matsumoto |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Erika Lee McEntarfer January 1973 (age 53) |
| Education | |
| Part of a series on |
| Authoritarianism during the Trump presidencies |
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Erika Lee McEntarfer (born January 1973) is an American labor economist who served as the commissioner of labor statistics from 2024 to 2025.
McEntarfer graduated from Bard College with a bachelor's degree in social science and from Virginia Tech with a doctorate in economics. She worked in the United States Department of the Treasury's Office of Tax Policy before becoming an economist in the Census Bureau's Center for Economic Studies. In the Biden administration, McEntarfer was a senior economist in the Council of Economic Advisers.
In July 2023, President Joe Biden nominated McEntarfer to serve as Commissioner of Labor Statistics at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. She was confirmed by the Senate in January 2024. On August 1, 2025, President Donald Trump controversially fired McEntarfer as commissioner, hours after a weak jobs report from the Bureau. Without evidence, Trump said McEntarfer had manipulated the jobs numbers, an allegation dismissed by economists. The firing was condemned by economists who saw it as politicizing national statistics and undermining trustworthiness of government data produced under the Trump administration. A 2026 NBER paper estimated that Trump's firing of McEntarfer cost the US economy $20 billion by creating economic policy uncertainty and undermining trust in official statistics, altering behaviors by investors, businesses, and households.