Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch once claimed the jobs numbers were faked. How did that turn out?

President Trump agrees that the number doesn’t reflect the reality of unemployment, though he reached a very different conclusion last week in deciding the numbers were “phony” and “rigged” to underrepresent the robustness of the labor market. He was so mad about the July jobs report, which showed unemployment ticking up to 4.2%, that he decided to fire BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday.

I immediately thought about the reaction when former General Electric CEO Jack Welch tweeted his disdain about the job numbers under the Obama Administration back in October 2012. Welch, a lifelong Republican, was skeptical that the unemployment rate had fallen below 8% for the first time in four years with an election looming. He tweeted: “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers.”

Welch had been retired from General Electric for more than a decade at that point and had plenty of opinions as a columnist for Fortune. Nevertheless, there was outrage that a leader of his stature was attacking the integrity of a vital nonpartisan government agency and the integrity of the U.S. itself by suggesting that core economic data was politicized. Welch quit the Fortune gig amid uproar over the tweet.

But he didn’t back away from his assertion. “I’m not the first person to question government numbers, and hopefully I won’t be the last,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. He likened the blowback he was facing to Soviet Russia and Communist China. What Welch, a man who famously claimed to cut the bottom 10% of GE’s workforce every year, did not do: Call for the BLS commissioner to be fired.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

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The markets

S&P 500 futures were up 0.7% this morning, premarket, after the index closed down 1.6% on Friday. STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.64% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.49% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 1.25%. China’s CSI 300 was up 0.39%. The South Korea KOSPI was up 0.91%. India’s Nifty 50 was up 0.6%. Bitcoin remains above $114K.

From the analysts

ING on the Fed: “Friday's soft jobs report knocked the stuffing out of the dollar's rally. Investors now attach an 80% probability to a 25bp rate cut from the Federal Reserve in September,” per Chris Turner et al.

Goldman Sachs on interest rates: “The US market’s hawkish read on Wednesday’s FOMC press conference has quickly faded into the background after Friday’s jobs report opened a clearer path to cuts,” per George Cole et al.

Goldman Sachs on U.S. GDP: “We expect GDP to grow at a 1% annualized pace in 2025Q3 and 2025Q4, with roughly flat domestic final sales and boosts from a narrowing of the trade deficit and a rebound in inventory accumulation,” per Jan Hatzius et al.

JPMorgan on corporate earnings: “With 65% of S&P 500 companies having reported, the season has so far been better-than-expected. 77% of companies are beating 2Q earnings (vs. 73% avg. last 4Qs…) and 76% are beating revenue estimates (vs. 60%). Roughly 62% of companies have had double beats (i.e. sales and net income, vs. 48% last 4Qs,” per By Dubravko Lakos-Bujas et al.

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CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.