Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump announced his new nominee to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Monday evening, less than two weeks after firing the agency’s previous commissioner.
Who does Trump want to run BLS? E.J. Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, is Trump’s choice for the top job at BLS. Antoni will need to be confirmed by the Senate before taking the job.
What do I need to know about him? Antoni’s nomination has many economists seriously concerned. BLS, which provides data about the state of the US economy, is a traditionally nonpartisan agency, and Antoni is anything but nonpartisan: He’s a longtime critic of the agency who contributed to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint for a second Trump administration, and he’s widely considered to be underqualified for the job.
Even more alarming, Antoni suggested on Monday that BLS could stop issuing monthly jobs reports, which provide a regular look at the state of the US economy and help guide economic decision-making. Instead, he suggested, the agency would release only quarterly data.
What’s the context for Antoni’s nomination? Trump needs a new BLS commissioner because he fired the last one, Erika McEntarfer, after the agency released jobs numbers that showed hiring at well below expected levels.
The decision raised concerns that Trump’s next pick would feel pressure to report better numbers, regardless of the true totals. Antoni’s background and comments do little to dispel that concern.
What’s the big picture? As my colleague Andrew Prokop has written, it’s unclear how much room the BLS head actually has to fudge jobs numbers — but if it happens, it would push the US into territory generally occupied by authoritarian regimes. It would likely also come with serious economic consequences, undermining both confidence in the US economy and the data that regulators and companies use to make major decisions, like setting interest rates.
