What’s Next for the Bureau of Labor Statistics?

Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erika McEntarfer over baseless and contradictory allegations that the agency had “rigged” the monthly jobs reports to make him look bad and boost Democrats in the 2024 election.  

If there was any evidence of the BLS skewing data for political purposes—spoiler alert: there wasn’t—then a president who cared about the integrity of economic data would have selected an impeccably qualified replacement to head the agency, someone with no hint of partisan bias who could restore trust in the numbers. 

But the president’s advisers and close supporters made it clear that Trump didn’t want a nonpartisan commissioner. He wanted one of “his own people” put in place. And on Monday, Trump did just that when he announced he would nominate E.J. Antoni, an economist at the Heritage Foundation and a frequent booster of pro-Trump narratives about the economy, to lead the BLS. “Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. 

The selection only raises more questions about the future and integrity of the agency as the White House signals intent to change how the BLS produces its estimates.   

Antoni is a regular in the MAGA media space, frequently appearing on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. Hours before the president fired the previous commissioner, Antoni appeared on the show to discuss the agency. “Have we put in our own person into BLS? Is a MAGA Republican that President Trump knows and trusts, are they running the Bureau of Labor Statistics yet?” Bannon asked Antoni. “No, unfortunately, Steve, we still haven’t gotten there,” he replied. After McEntarfer’s firing, Bannon advocated for Antoni to take over the BLS. 

The think tanker’s nomination prompted a flood of criticism from economists pointing to his lack of qualifications and a history of misrepresenting economic metrics and advancing partisan spin. 

“E.J. Antoni is completely unqualified to be BLS Commissioner,” said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) during the Obama administration. “He is an extreme partisan and does not have any relevant expertise.”

Antoni’s professional economic background is thin. He completed his doctorate in economics at Northern Illinois University in 2020 before moving into the world of conservative think tanks, working at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). He jumped to the Heritage Foundation a few months after his former boss at TPPF, Kevin Roberts, became president of Heritage. Antoni’s only published economic scholarship is his dissertation on fiscal policy, which according to Google Scholar has garnered only a single citation. The citation came in a TPPF 2021 white paper authored by Antoni’s former colleague Vance Ginn, the former chief economist at the Texas think tank. (Ginn recently decried the administration’s attacks on the BLS.)

Past BLS commissioners have typically produced more extensive economic research and have served in other roles at economic statistical agencies. McEntarfer, the fired commissioner appointed by President Joe Biden, published extensively on labor markets, receiving more than 1,300 citations. She also previously served as an economist on the CEA and at the Department of Treasury, and was a lead economist at the Census Bureau—one of the nation’s three principal economic statistical agencies along with the BLS and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. William Beach, the BLS commissioner Trump nominated during his first term, had worked as the chief economist for the Senate Budget Committee. Beach is also a Heritage Foundation alumnus, but he led the Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis at a time when the think tank was far less partisan. 

Antoni’s nomination has received the most pointed criticism from right-of-center economists and conservative think tankers. “The hope was that [Trump] would pick someone … who people would have trust in and could lead the BLS in an appropriate way, with relevant experience and, ideally, not hyper-partisan,” said Stan Veuger, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “EJ Antoni is really the opposite of that.” Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law and Economics, said, “There’s just nothing in his writing or his resume to suggest that he’s qualified for the position, besides that he is always manipulating the data to favor Trump in some way.” 

Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Dispatch contributing writer, noted, “The articles and tweets I’ve seen him publish are probably the most error-filled of any think tank economist right now.”  

After Trump announced the pick, economists quickly began circulating on social media numerous examples of errors and misrepresentations made by Antoni. In one case, he cited data from the Import Price Index as evidence that the costs of Trump’s tariffs have not been passed along to Americans, but the index measures pre-tariff prices. In several instances, Antoni has seemingly cherry-picked out of context or anomalous statistics to make a point unsupported by longer-term data trend lines—a practice Antoni himself criticized Biden for engaging in to claim job growth wins during the economic recovery from the pandemic. 

In October 2024, Antoni coauthored a report claiming the economy had been in recession since 2022, a conclusion he and his coauthor came to by creating their own inflation adjustments that were panned by other economists. A research economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was unable to replicate the paper’s calculations.  

The kicker came Wednesday evening when NBC News reported on video footage of Antoni walking through a mob outside the Capitol on January 6, 2021; video shows him moving through crowds away from the Capitol shortly before rioters in the crowd breached the building. He declined to comment on his presence in the crowd, but the White House claimed he was in town for work meetings and that the footage shows he was merely a bystander. 

Antoni also has a lengthy record of casting doubt on the trustworthiness of BLS estimates, calling the previous commissioner “incompetent.” Following the president’s pattern, Antoni has portrayed downward jobs revisions as evidence of politically skewed data. 

Former BLS officials and advisers expressed concern at Antoni’s background but maintained trust in the continued integrity of the agency’s reports. Former officials The Dispatch spoke with stressed the nonpartisan and professional ethic of the roughly 2,000 BLS staff. Erica Groshen, BLS commissioner during the Obama administration, noted that the commissioner doesn’t have access to jobs reports and other statistical products until after they’re completed. “The ability for mischief to be committed by a single individual at the top of the organization is very limited,” David Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the director of U.S. economic research at Bloomberg Economics, told The Dispatch. Wilcox served on a committee advising the BLS, BEA, and the Census Bureau. 

BLS economic reports are decentralized, with hundreds of staff working on the statistical products, making it almost impossible to contain any conspiracy to manipulate the data, as former commissioner Beach told The Dispatch last week. 

The backstop against cooking the books, former officials continued to emphasize, is the agency staff. Groshen and Wilcox both said that staff members would resign in protest and blow the whistle on any attempts to monkey with the data. “My conviction remains strong that if there is any attempt to manipulate the data for political purposes, we will hear about it, first and foremost, from BLS employees, who put up their hand and say, this just isn’t right,” Wilcox said. 

The commissioner is also bound by an array of internal agency rules and statistical policy directives from the Office of Budget and Management (OMB) designed to protect the integrity and trustworthiness of economic metrics. Antoni suggested earlier this month that the jobs report should be suspended until its accuracy can be improved. Groshen said the commissioner couldn’t do so unilaterally, citing Congressional statutes mandating the publication of monthly employment statistics. 

But most of the guardrails are not enshrined in law and could potentially be changed by the Secretary of Labor, OMB, or by executive action from the president. Russell Vought, OMB director in the first and current Trump administration, has long criticized the independence of government agencies, saying in November that independence around “who gets to make decisions on statistics” needs to be eliminated. 

Groshen, along with a dozen former data agency officials, published a 2023 research paper sounding the alarm on the lack of statutory provisions protecting the professional autonomy of statistical agencies. The authors concluded “a lack of professional autonomy unduly exposes the principal federal statistical agencies to efforts to undermine the objectivity of their products and that agencies cannot completely rebuff these efforts.”  

The White House is reportedly holding meetings on making changes to BLS products. “We need to look at the means and the methods of how the United States is acquiring this very important data, and all of that is going to be done,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. A spokeswoman said that Antoni will “prioritize increasing survey response rates and modernizing data collection methods to improve the BLS’s accuracy.” 

Declining survey response rates and data modernization are long-standing challenges for the BLS, but the Trump administration has undermined the agency’s ability to improve its products. The administration closed the advisory committees helping BLS and the other statistical agencies work on these problems. The agency has suffered from early staff exits encouraged by the Department of Government Efficiency and an accompanying hiring freeze blocking the BLS from filling vacancies. It has also lacked sufficient funding. In April, the agency suspended data collection in several cities for the Consumer Price Index due to resource constraints, and the administration’s FY2026 budget proposal cuts the BLS’ budget. 

If BLS data protections remain intact, a partisan commissioner could still use the position to advance biased interpretations of the data and sow further distrust or confusion about the direction of the economy. Some observers argue betting on BLS staff and regulations to protect the statistical integrity of the data could miss the forest for the trees. Furman, the former CEA chair, said that if a commissioner tried to skew the numbers, “I have no doubt whistle-blowers in the agency would alert the world. But I also have no doubt that this would turn into another debate with multiple sides, just like the firing of the B.L.S. commissioner itself has become.”

The Senate must vote to confirm Antoni, and in the meantime, the BLS is being led by Deputy   Commissioner William Wiatrowski, a well-respected agency veteran acting as interim commissioner. But the chances of a sufficient number of GOP senators shooting down Trump’s selection seem slim. The nominee would first need to clear the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana chairs the committee and has criticized BLS jobs revisions in the past. 

“We need a BLS commissioner committed to producing accurate, unbiased economic information to the American people,” Cassidy’s office said in a statement. “Chairman Cassidy looks forward to meeting with Dr. Antoni to discuss how he will accomplish this.” Sen. Susan Collins of Maine—another HELP committee member and one of the few GOP senators who has voted against Trump nominees this term—has also criticized BLS revisions. Collins’ office did not respond to The Dispatch’s request for comment on Antoni’s nomination. 

If confirmed, perhaps Antoni will focus solely on improving BLS programs in an unbiased manner. But to do so would require him breaking with the biased narratives and one-sided economic interpretations he’s built a career around amplifying. It would also risk a pink slip from the president for jobs numbers he doesn’t like. 

Groshen emphasized that BLS commissioners have always seen their role as purely diagnostic and distinct from policy or political interpretation. “Is the cup half empty? Or is the cup half full,” she said. “The BLS answer is, this is an eight-ounce vessel containing four ounces of water.”