E.J. Antoni of the Heritage Foundation testifies before a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Oct. 24, 2023. (Screenshot from C-SPAN)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump nominated conservative economist E.J. Antoni to fill the top spot at the Bureau of Labor Statistics after abruptly firing the previous statistician following a disappointing jobs report earlier this month.

Trump announced the nominee late Monday on his Truth Social platform, stating that “Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE.”

Antoni, an economist at the far-right Heritage Foundation, has harshly criticized the previous BLS commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden in 2023 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate 86-6 in January 2024. The bureau tracks national economic data, including employment figures.

Without providing evidence, Trump slammed the latest jobs report, released Aug. 1, as “RIGGED” and fired McEntarfer hours later.

The economy gained just 73,000 jobs in July, according to the monthly report. BLS also significantly adjusted May and June figures, to 33,000 for both months, down from the previously reported 291,000. Revisions to past reports often happen after the bureau receives updated data from businesses and federal agencies.

U.S. economic data collection is often referred to as the “gold standard,” as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a Trump appointee, said last month.

Trump faced backlash for firing McEntarfer, including from his own former BLS commissioner.

William Beach, whom Trump tapped in 2017 to lead BLS, told CNN McEntarfer’s firing was “groundless.”

BLS data is “more accurate now than they were 30 years ago,” Beach said during the Aug. 3 interview.

In an Aug. 4 appearance on Steve Bannon’s WarRoom podcast, Antoni said BLS data collection is “outdated.”

“You need somebody who is willing to overhaul the entire thing,” he told Bannon.

Shortly after Trump’s November win, Antoni posted on X that “DOGE needs to take a chainsaw to BLS.”

Kevin Roberts, Heritage Foundation’s president, said Tuesday that Trump made a “stellar choice” in nominating Antoni.

“EJ Antoni is one of the sharpest economic minds in the nation—a fearless truth-teller who grasps that sound economics must serve the interests of American families, not globalist elites,” Roberts said in a statement. “His leadership as chief economist at The Heritage Foundation has been instrumental in advancing our mission to protect American families and rebuild a resilient economy rooted in free enterprise.”

Antoni contributed to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a roughly 900-page far-right blueprint to overhaul government institutions published ahead of Trump’s election win.

Antoni will need approval from the Senate, which currently has a 53-47 Republican majority.

Sen. Patty Murray, a senior member and former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, slammed Antoni as an “unqualified right-wing extremist who won’t think twice about manipulating BLS data and degrading the credibility of the agency to make Trump happy.”

“Any Senator who votes to confirm this partisan hack is voting to shred the integrity of our nation’s best economic and jobs data, which underpin our entire economy. If E.J. Antoni gets confirmed, I hope Republicans like playing make-believe, because that’s all BLS data will become,” the Washington state Democrat said in a statement Tuesday.

Sen. Bill Cassidy chairs the committee, which will be tasked with advancing Antoni’s nomination to the full Senate. Cassidy, of Louisiana, did not have a statement on Antoni posted on his website or X feed as of Tuesday at 3 p.m. Eastern.

Photo by Architect of the Capitol | U.S. government work via Flickr

The July jobs report released last Friday wasn’t pretty. It showed weaker than anticipated U.S. job growth in July, and there were substantial downward revisions of jobs numbers for May and June as well. Economists predicted a slowdown. The chaos of tariff threats has created substantial uncertainty, which is bad for the economy, and the tariffs that have gone into effect have raised prices. It’s no surprise, then, that we’re seeing a slowdown in jobs. 

Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi noted on social media, “It’s no mystery why the economy is struggling; blame increasing U.S. tariffs and highly restrictive immigration policy. The tariffs are cutting increasingly deeply into the profits of American companies and the purchasing power of American households. Fewer immigrant workers means a smaller economy.”

But instead of reflecting on mistakes in economic policy or offering some austerity suggestion, like limiting U.S.  children to  two dolls each , President Donald Trump blamed the messenger, firing the government official in charge of the data release, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Erika McEntarfer. He baselessly asserted that the bad news was “concocted” and suggested that he knows better than the data. The economy is great, according to him, and he will find a commissioner to tell him so.

Trump’s approach is a disaster for economic decision making and for public trust. The BLS is an independent agency with a strong legacy of providing the data that businesses, analysts and policymakers need. Good economic decisions require reliable data. As the American Economics Association wrote: “The BLS has long had a well-deserved reputation for professional excellence and nonpartisan integrity. Safeguarding this tradition is vital for the continued health of the U.S. economy and public trust in our institutions.” 

The BLS monthly jobs report provides a timely snapshot of labor market dynamics which inform investing and hiring decisions as well as policy choices. BLS data also measures the rate of inflation through the consumer price index. The rising price of goods is not only a key economic indicator but also the scale by which Social Security payments are adjusted and a point of reference in private and union wage negotiations.

BLS data are essential to understanding what is going on in the economy, when a slowdown is emerging, and the cost of daily life. The independence and integrity of the agency, long assumed and supported by both parties, is now under attack.

Wisconsinites lived through something like this more than a decade ago. Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker promised to create 250,000 jobs in his first term. He focused on the goal relentlessly, at least until it became clear that he would not meet it. (In fact, the Wisconsin economy didn’t even meet Walker’s first term goal across his two terms – adding just 233,000 jobs by the time he left office after serving for eight years.)

In the first years of Walker’s  “relentless focus on jobs” under his administration’s tagline  “Wisconsin is Open for Business,” the monthly numbers showed that Wisconsin’s economy was growing more slowly than the national labor market and neighboring states. 

Walker blamed the data. He insisted that we wait instead for a federal source which was more reliable, but had a substantial time lag. As someone who watches this data, I can assure that this was the only time in my three-decade career when differences between monthly and quarterly sources of federal jobs data were a policy talking point. 

But in the end, the data issue was just a distraction from the truth. Wisconsin was growing more slowly, and no amount of complaining about the data or waiting for another source on jobs could change that fact. Eventually, the Walker administration went silent on both the data and the promised 250,000 jobs. 

Trump’s approach is worse than waiting for another source of data. His firing of the commissioner suggests that he’ll only accept data that confirms his narrative. And that makes it harder for any of us to trust any data the federal government is willing to release. 

That’s bad for the economy and bad for democracy. As narrow and nerdy as this topic may seem, we all have an interest in facts and reliable data. We have had a government infrastructure capable of producing it. We lose it at our own peril.