President Trump said he will fire the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after the independent government agency reported weak jobs numbers for July and the preceding month.

Why it matters: Trump is turning his ire about poor jobs numbers on the number-crunchers. • In a statement, the BLS confirmed that commissioner Erika McEntarfer was "terminated" on Friday. It named longtime BLS official William Wiatrowski as the acting head of the agency.

The big picture: Government statistics agencies are historically insulated from politics, so they can accomplish the deeply technical task of tallying up activity in a $30 trillion, 160 million-job economy. • It came after BLS reported that the U.S. added only 73,000 jobs in July and sharply revised downward its May and June job grow

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