From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Ketrowef.

This is the Daily.

For most Americans, the government's monthly jobs number was a pretty dull statistic.

Until a few days ago, when President Trump angrily fired the person responsible for producing it,

the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Now, from Washington to Wall Street, everyone's wondering whether you can still trust federal statistics

if the president is willing to just get rid of people

who give him facts he doesn't like.

Today, I speak with my colleague, Ben Castleman, about how the government's economic data

suddenly turned into a national drama.

It's Tuesday, August 5th.

Ben, I just want to start by acknowledging that we may be on the brink of the nerdiest daily episode ever,

but I am really excited to have you on for this because, honestly, this is kind of your Super Bowl.

I mean, you have made a career of labor numbers, and this time, we didn't just get job numbers. There was extreme

drama around these job numbers. So I want to get into it. How did this whole fight start?

So every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or the BLS, puts out this big report on jobs, hiring, employment, unemployment from the previous month.

And it is my Super Bowl 12 times a year.

Lucky for you.

It's my Super Bowl.

It's a Super Bowl for a lot of econ nerds around the country.

And that's because this is in some ways the most important single number or single set of numbers that we get about the economy each month.

It matters to regular people, right? This is about whether people

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