President Trump announced on Monday that he would nominate E.J. Antoni, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mr. Trump fired the previous commissioner of the agency after it reported weak job growth.
Dr. Antoni, who would need to be confirmed by the Senate, has previously criticized the bureau and questioned its methods and reports. His nomination underscored Mr. Trump’s attempts to place his own allies in control of a key repository of data about the nation’s hiring, wages and prices.
Earlier this month, Mr. Trump fired the previous commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, who was confirmed on a bipartisan basis to the post in 2024. A Ph.D. economist, Dr. McEntarfer had been a career civil servant at federal statistics agencies for years before assuming the helm at the bureau, and her dismissal was met with both outrage and sadness across the political spectrum.
Her firing came after the release of new figures showing that job growth had been far weaker than previously reported. The bureau revised down the number of jobs created in May and June by 258,000, an unusually large revision that provoked Mr. Trump’s ire.
Without evidence, the president claimed that Dr. McEntarfer had “rigged” the federal hiring data to harm him politically. The firing raised concerns about how Mr. Trump might handle future releases of economic data, with the latest monthly report on consumer prices scheduled to arrive on Tuesday morning. That gauge is expected to show an uptick in inflation partly because of the president’s expanding trade war.
“Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE,” Mr. Trump said on Truth Social.
Dr. Antoni, who serves as the Heritage Foundation’s chief economist, previously has echoed some of Mr. Trump’s concerns. The agency routinely revises job growth figures as it tries to refine preliminary data that is often imperfect. While most economists expect such revisions, Mr. Trump and his allies have seized on them as an indication that the data is being manipulated.
“There are better ways to collect, process, and disseminate data — that is the task for the next B.L.S. commissioner, and only consistent delivery of accurate data in a timely manner will rebuild the trust that has been lost over the last several years,” Dr. Antoni posted on X last week.
Mr. Trump’s announcement arrived a moment of great uncertainty for the statistics agency, which describes its mandate as “the fearless publication of the facts,” using large-scale surveys and rigorous analysis. The bureau is seen as the gold standard for information on prices, employment, productivity and more — an essential underpinning for policymaking and financial markets.
Economists on both the left and right of the political spectrum say it is critical that the heads of the statistical agencies are seen as politically neutral
Many cited William W. Beach, who led the Bureau of Labor Statistics during the first Trump administration, as a model to follow. A conservative economist with decades of experience working for right-leaning think tanks, he was also widely praised for his nonpartisan leadership, and has condemned Dr. McEntarfer’s dismissal.
Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the commissioner doesn’t necessarily have to be well-known, or come from an elite institution — but they must not be seen as carrying water for the White House.
“Is this person perceived to be independent of the president and independent of partisan political considerations?” Mr. Strain said. “That’s the whole ballgame here.”
Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist for J.P. Morgan, agreed. “What you don’t want is someone who has just been a long time loyalist without any obvious skills on the job,” he said in an interview before Mr. Trump announced Dr. Antoni’s nomination.
Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, previously insisted the administration was “absolutely not” trying to shoot the messenger on the heels of a poor jobs report.
But Mr. Trump’s stated reasons for sacking Dr. McEntarfer may make it harder for the next commissioner to convince the public that he or she will stick to the facts, even if the numbers are unflattering to President Trump.
Still, it would not be easy for a new commissioner to skew the work of the agency’s many civil servants, at least not without it being obvious both to outside observers and to the career officials working inside the agency.
Economists will be scrutinizing the data for any hints of interference: numbers that stop getting published, tables that are altered without clear explanations, methodological changes that aren’t clearly documented. And they will also be watching for changes within the bureau itself.
“If the new commissioner comes in and you see either a lot of firings or a lot of resignations at the levels one and two below that person, that is certainly not something that would engender confidence,” Mr. Feroli said.
The agency has already seen quite a few departures. It employed about 2,300 people in September 2024, the most recent official data available, but about a third of top positions are currently vacant. And the White House has already weakened outside oversight of the agency’s methods by dissolving an advisory panel of experts in January.
Those changes, along with a diminished budget, will also make it difficult for Dr. Antoni to tackle what economists see as a legitimate problem at the bureau: shrinking survey coverage and declining response rates, which can exacerbate the kinds of large revisions that Mr. Trump cited as a reason for firing Dr. McEntarfer.
In its budget request for 2026, the White House proposed decreasing the bureau’s budget by $56 million.
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
Ben Casselman is the chief economics correspondent for The Times. He has reported on the economy for nearly 20 years.
Lydia DePillis reports on the American economy. She has been a journalist since 2009, and can be reached at [email protected].
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