We may already live in the post-truth world, but are we about to enter the era of post-truth statistics?

Each month, the US employment report is one of the most closely watched releases on the health of the world’s largest economy. Financial markets can move sharply depending on the strength of the numbers.

This month, the jobs report was weak. Hours later, US President Donald Trump called the numbers “phony” and fired the head of the agency, Erika McEntarfer.

It was an unprecedented attack on the government’s impartial statistics body, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is the agency responsible for tracking jobs, wages and inflation – key numbers that tell us how the economy is really doing.

Trump followed that up this week with a further attack on the nation’s economic institutions. He claimed in a social post he had fired one of the governors of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve. The governor, Lisa Cook, said he had no authority to do so.

With Donald Trump’s war on numbers and long-standing institutions, can we even trust US economic data anymore?

Some players in financial markets are already looking at alternative sources of data to get a real-time read on the health of the economy – such as satellite images of the shadows cast by oil tankers.

On the surface, replacing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics........

© The Conversation