The problem the admin has is that economists at the BLS by and large aren't scared of getting fired. That work experience is gold in the private sector - most of them can easily get a job in finance and 3x-4x their comp.
I'm not being sarcastic when I say it probably looks great on an economist's resume to say they were fired by the Trump admin.
You'd just open the interview with that - go straight to salary neg
What happens when no-one wants to hire them in fear of retributions from the Trump government?
Please tell us what happened in this imaginary scenario of yours, I'm curious
Maybe these are the numbers after they were fudged to save a job?
With a d———- there is no nuance. You don’t get credit for fudging them and making them less bad, you save your job by releasing a positive number, the more positive the better. Truth be damned