Ispent much of the 1990s as secretary of labor. One unit of the Labor Department is the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I was instructed by my predecessors as well as by the White House, and by every labor economist and statistician I came in contact with, that one of my cardinal responsibilities was to guard the independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Otherwise, this crown jewel of knowledge about jobs and the economy would be compromised. If politicized, it would no longer be trusted as a source of information. So what does Trump do? In one fell swoop on Friday he essentially destroyed the credibility of the BLS. Trump didn’t like the fact that the BLS revised downward its jobs reports for April and May.

Well, that’s too bad. Revisions in monthly jobs reports are nothing new. They’

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