Fox personalities are taking aim at the Bureau of Labor Statistics to excuse the latest monthly jobs numbers, as others point to a weakening economy and warn of a possible recession.

The day before the August jobs report from the BLS was released, Fox Business hosts began excusing what they anticipated would be a weak month of job growth by echoing President Donald Trump’s attack on the agency and its data production, which is considered the “gold standard.” 

Their attacks continued right up until just before the network covered the report’s release, which showed a paltry 22,000 jobs created in August and revisions to previous months’ data showing a decrease of 13,000 jobs for the month of June and a slightly higher increase of 79,000 jobs in July. 

And afterward, at least one host continued to lambaste the BLS over how it collects its job data, even though economists have shown that initial jobs reports have been getting more accurate over time.

• On September 4, Mornings with Maria guest host Cheryl Casone said: “President Trump’s probably not going to be happy to see a weak jobs report. And then also, do you trust the data? You know, that’s the big question mark we’ve had.” 

  She continued: “That's the problem we’ve got right now with this jobs report is the data is so muddled, you had so many revisions last year. … Absolutely they’ve got to clean up the data. But they don't have a new chief in place yet.”

• Later in the program, Casone similarly said: “If you do get that slowdown, and if we do get a rough jobs report tomorrow, I’ve said this before — you know, President Trump’s probably not going to be happy with that. At the same time, we have to ask ourselves if we can trust the data. The market's really going to depend on it. We have nothing else.

  One of her guests, Strategic Wealth Partners CEO Mark Tepper, replied: “The BLS needs more than a new commissioner. I applaud President Trump for doing that.”

• That afternoon, host Larry Kudlow dismissed the monthly jobs reports as “one big crapshoot” and complained: “Plus, we've seen some very big downward revisions in recent months. It's quite possible there would be more of these on the way.” 

  Kudlow then lamented that Trump’s chosen nominee for the BLS isn’t in place yet, saying: “We have a new man at the BLS, E.J. Antoni, a great friend of this show and an awfully smart fella, but he's not going to be in the office and not going to make any real improvements for quite some time. It's going to take a while.” 

  Kudlow also said: “Don't hang your hat on tomorrow's jobs report, because the economy's doing better than you think.”

• Just before the August jobs report was released on September 5, Casone cast doubt on whatever the jobs report would say: “We have to make sure our viewers understand that none of the data methodology has changed in the last month.” 

  After the report was released, Lonski Group founder John Lonski admitted: “Make no mistake, this is a weak jobs report.”

• After Lonski seemingly accepted the validity of the jobs report, Casone returned to expressing distrust in the BLS data, saying: “I mentioned this before we got the numbers, that this is the first report that we’ve gotten since President Trump fired the administrator for the BLS, the commissioner. But at the same time, it’s going to take months to make meaningful change in how the data is collected. We have to trust this data — the street has to have this data. At the same time, the way the data is calculated is pretty arcane. I mean, the fact that you’re still sending out faxes to companies, and the report rate right now, the last time I checked, was 43%. That’s the response rate. That means that the data that we get is not great just on the surface.”

Following the weak July jobs report on August 1, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and Project 2025 contributor and Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni called for getting rid of the BLS commissioner. Hours later, Trump fired Dr. Erika McEntarfer in a move that economists expressed alarm over, saying it would diminish public trust in government economic data.

Days later, after Bannon suggested nominating Antoni on his War Room program, Trump named him as his nominee to run the BLS. Antoni, favored by the Fox Business hosts who tried to undermine confidence in the BLS prior to the weak August jobs report, is considered an unqualified “partisan hack" by economists across the political spectrum.