E.J. Antoni, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), has proposed pausing the release of monthly employment reports in favor of more reliable quarterly updates.
In an interview with Fox News Digital on Monday (ahead of his nomination) that was published Tuesday, Antoni argued that the BLS’s current approach to tracking U.S. job numbers is flawed and often misleading, and suggested it be replaced with “more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data.” Antoni said: “How on earth are businesses supposed to plan — or how is the Fed supposed to conduct monetary policy — when they don’t know how many jobs are being added or lost in our economy? It’s a serious problem that needs to be fixed immediately. Until it is corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data.”
Antoni – currently the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation – believes the monthly reports should be replaced temporarily with quarterly reports that offer greater accuracy. This change, he said, should remain in place until the BLS overhauls its data collection methods to produce dependable monthly figures: “From Wall Street investors to policymakers in Washington, key decisions hinge on these numbers,” Antoni noted. “If people lose confidence in the data, the consequences can ripple across the economy.”
Trump announced Antoni’s nomination just days after firing former BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on August 1. That decision came after the agency reported that 73,000 jobs were created in July—less than half the 147,000 initially reported for June. Trump accused McEntarfer of deliberately inflating job reports before the upcoming November 5 election to benefit the Biden administration. According to Trump, later adjustments erased a total of 818,000 jobs from the record. McEntarfer had been nominated to the BLS post by President Joe Biden in July 2023 and was confirmed by the Senate in January 2024.
Trump praised Antoni, writing Monday on Truth Social: “I am pleased to announce that I am nominating Highly Respected Economist, Dr. E.J. Antoni, as the next Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE. I know E.J. Antoni will do an incredible job in this new role. Congratulations E.J.!”
Asked whether the BLS would continue to release monthly jobs reports, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “I believe that is the plan and that’s the hope, and that these monthly reports will be data that the American people can trust. We need to restore new leadership that we trust” at the BLS, adding that “we need to look at the means and the methods of how the United States is acquiring this very important data. The goal, of course, is to provide honest and good data for the American people to make very important economic decisions on.”
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