The economist tapped to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics has suggested that the agency do away with the monthly jobs report altogether.Donald Trump’s nominee for BLS commissioner, E.J. Antoni, told Fox Business Tuesday that “BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports” and instead only rely on quarterly data.Prior to entering the fold of the Trump administration, Antoni worked as the Heritage Foundation’s chief economist and helped develop Project 2025.“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,” Antoni told the network.“Until it is corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data,” he continued. “Major decision-makers from Wall Street to D.C. rely on these numbers, and a lack of confidence in the data has far-reaching consequences.”Trump further claimed in a Truth Social post Tuesday that Antoni would ensure that the jobs reports are “honest” and “accurate.”The first monthly jobs report was published in 1916.Trump abruptly fired BLS’s last commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, hours after the release of the last jobs report, claiming that the Biden-era appointee’s work analyzing the granular data of America’s economy was “faked” and could not be trusted.At the core of Trump’s gripe with the July report was its revision of figures from the preceding months, which moved the three-month growth average to 35,000. A lag like that hasn’t emerged since 2010, and it made his first six months in office—and his controversial tariff overhaul—look particularly bad. The report’s downsizing also suggested that while some sectors, such as health care and social assistance, gained jobs, the vast majority of the market lost employment.America’s most prominent economists suggested that the weak jobs report could be the first major indicator that a recession is on the horizon.This story has been updated.
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