The Biden administration vastly overestimated job growth during its final two years, pro-Trump economist Steve Moore said in a brief presentation from the Oval Office Thursday afternoon as he unveiled new unpublished Census Bureau data.
Moore’s findings come amid the backlash President Donald Trump is facing for firing the head of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a Biden-era appointee who he has claimed issued “rigged” jobs numbers during the Biden administration to help Democrats.
“I was telling the president that he did the right thing calling for a new head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, because this shows that over the last two years of the Biden administration, the BLS overestimated job creation by 1.5 million jobs. Mr. President that’s a gigantic error,” Moore said Thursday afternoon in the Oval Office.
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Trump quipped in response that it “might not have been an error,” noting it may have been due to incompetence instead.
“If it was an error, that would be one thing,” Trump added. “I don’t think it’s an error. I think they did it on purpose.”
Just days after announcing the decision to fire Erika McEntarfer, the president accused her of inflating job numbers to an “all-time high” ahead of the 2024 presidential election to help Democrats hold the White House. Trump also claimed that, after he won the election, McEntarfer readjusted the numbers downward to make them look worse.
Trump said the “miscalculations” were some of the most significant in more than 50 years.
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Trump’s lashed out at McEntarfer after a weaker-than-expected July jobs report and downward revisions made to the prior two month’s reports. The latter revisions suggested the economy was not as strong as previously expected.
The move drew widespread condemnation from Trump’s critics, who argued the move could set a dangerous precedent that undermines credibility in the BLS’s data.
“The totally groundless firing of Dr. Erika McEntarfer, my successor as Commissioner of Labor Statistics at BLS, sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau,” said William Beach, who ran the BLS during Trump’s first term.
On Thursday, in addition to sharing how the Biden administration may have miscalculated job numbers during its final two years, Moore said the advanced look at Census data he had access to also showed that, from January through the end of June, the average median family income, when adjusted for inflation, was up $1,174.
Moore also said he used the new data to compare family income numbers in the U.S. under Biden compared to the numbers during Trump’s first term.
“You can see that — by the way, these dotted lines here, Mr. President, that’s COVID-19, so if it had not been for COVID these numbers would have been substantially better — but even taking that into account President Trump’s last year, in 2020, we saw, a $6,400 real after-inflation gain in income for the average family,” Moore touted Thursday.
“And that compares with Joe Biden, which was a measly $551. So, Mr. President, you gained ten times more income for the average family than Joe Biden, and that’s because of your policies.”
Fox News Digital reached out to BLS but did not receive an immediate reply.
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