U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin defended Trump's firing of the agency director by saying that the Bureau of Labor Statistics should have been reformed long ago.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin defended President Donald Trump's decision to dismiss the Bureau of Labor Statistics director, stating that reform of the agency was long overdue. "Reforming the Bureau of Labor Statistics is something that should have been done a long time ago," Mnuchin said on MSNBC on Thursday. "The mistake they made last week was an error of five to six standard deviations. It's like boarding a plane in Miami thinking you're going to New York and ending up in Denver." "It feels very casual to me doing things the old way and expecting different results," Mnuchin said. He added that McEntarfer's successor "will be a highly professional statistician or labor economist, and will not make such serious mistakes."