(Reuters) -Investor Ray Dalio said on Monday he, too, would likely have fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he “believes the data is not good”, but urged U.S. President Donald Trump to disclose the reasoning behind her removal.
In a post on social media platform X, Dalio – founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates – said leaders “manipulating numbers” to suit their political objectives could be a big problem, echoing growing concern around the quality of economic data.
Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer last week, accusing her of rigging the jobs figures, but did not provide evidence of the alleged manipulation.
“It would be good if President Trump made his thinking clear,” Dalio said.
Critics have warned Trump’s move could erode trust in official U.S. economic data, with J.P.Morgan’s chief U.S. economist Michael Feroli saying the risks of politicizing the data collection process should not be overlooked.
Trump said on Sunday he would announce a new BLS commissioner within three or four days.
Dalio said the method of calculating estimates for employment numbers was “obsolete and error-prone” and called for big changes to the way government assesses what is going on with the economy.
“The huge revisions in Friday’s employment numbers are symptomatic of this, especially because the revisions brought the numbers toward private estimates that were in fact much better,” he said in his post.
Dalio handed over control of Bridgewater to a new generation of investors in 2022 and has sold his remaining stake in the firm.
(Reporting by Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)
