Trump’s firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner puts crucial health data at risk

In early July, I began teaching a summer course: introductory biostatistics for an accelerated master’s of public health program. Most of the students are clinicians, and biostatistics is (understandably) not often the favorite course. On day one, I told them that one measure of the power of statistics is the way unscrupulous leaders attempt to shut them down when they do not like what the data reveal.

That lesson has taken a new significance recently, when President Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Erika McEntarfer, after her agency released monthly jobs data that he found unfavorable.

BLS has existed for more than 100 years, providing comprehensive economic data to the American people. It runs or sponsors many major representative surveys, including the Current Population Survey, a household-based survey of employment data, and the National Longitudinal Surveys, a set of long-running surveys providing time trends on health, economics, and much more. It is the second-largest principal statistical agency in the U.S.’s decentralized federal statistical service. The only larger agency is the U.S. Census Bureau itself, which currently lacks a permanent director.

Data from the BLS, along with the other statistical agencies, provide the foundation for assessing the state of the country, identifying trends, and planning the deployment of resources to address economic, social, and health challenges. They form the foundation of an incredible amount of academic research as well and provide user-friendly datasets for teaching students how to work with data. Even as Trump’s federal agencies have moved away from data-driven decisions, or are happy to cherry-pick their own data, state and local governments, as well as nongovernment actors like businesses and nonprofits, rely on factual and timely data.

In health care specifically, the use of federal data is enormous. BLS is the primary home of workplace injury, illness, and fatality data, for one thing. Its economic surveys are used to estimate unemployment levels, poverty, and income inequality, all key indicators for health. Needs assessments undertaken by health care facilities or state and local health agencies rely on population and demographic data. Planning by pharmaceutical companies relies on estimates of the prevalence of diseases and future trends. Researchers use data to uncover patterns that can lead to new policies or interventions to make people healthier. If federal data, from BLS or the Census Bureau or the National Center for Health Statistics, become unreliable, the public health infrastructure is at risk.

And this firing goes beyond BLS to put a chill on all federal statistical agencies. Whoever Trump appoints to lead the Census Bureau will certainly know that their job is at risk if he does not like the results of the next American Community Survey or another release. And the director of the National Center for Health Statistics may think twice about releasing data that show anything other than overwhelming success of his boss, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the so-called MAHA agenda.

This is one more step along Trump’s road to sowing distrust and doubt in federal data, or stopping its release altogether. In his first term, he forcibly moved the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, leading to a massive loss of expertise from which the statistical agency has not recovered. He also tried to insert a citizenship question into the U.S. Census, which would have led to extreme undercounting of certain households. In his second term, Trump and his Republican allies have been purging federal websites of key datasets on climate, health, and many other topics and eliminating research and evaluation offices.

All of this puts Trump in some dubious company. When a 1937 census threatened to reveal the high mortality of the recent famine, Joseph Stalin had the senior statisticians arrested and executed, and the data were suppressed for decades. More recently, the Greek government prosecuted the head of the national statistics agency, Andreas Georgiou, for accurately revising economic data, clarifying the scope of the economic challenges facing the country.

Thankfully, there have been no arrests or prosecutions in the U.S. yet. But Trump’s Justice and Homeland Security departments have no qualms about prosecuting judges or arresting senators, so a statistician will certainly not be immune.

The firing of one statistical official may not seem like the biggest offense. But the modern state, and the lives of everyone within it, are entwined with these crucial data sources. This link lives on in my and every course on the subject: the word “state” is the core of statistics. If we allow Trump and the Republicans to continue down this path, we will soon find ourselves knowing much less about the country and the world in which we live. This loss of information will impede our planning and decision-making, exacerbate disparities, and hide important trends. And that will make us all less secure and less healthy.

Lee Kennedy-Shaffer, Ph.D., is a biostatistics educator and researcher at the Yale School of Public Health.