President Trump said he would nominate Brett Matsumoto, a little-known government economist, to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, six months after the president fired the previous head of the agency after it reported disappointing jobs numbers.
Mr. Matsumoto is Mr. Trump’s second pick to lead the bureau, which produces data on the labor market, inflation and other topics. In August, the president announced he would appoint E.J. Antoni, a conservative economist, to the job, but withdrew the nomination after it faced bipartisan criticism.
Mr. Matsumoto is unlikely to face the same backlash. He has little public profile outside the nerdy world of statistical experts but is relatively well known inside it, in part because he was previously active on social media, writing posts that explained the nuances of statistical data. That differed starkly from Mr. Antoni, who was criticized for social media posts that often appeared to distort economic statistics to support partisan positions.
Mr. Matsumoto did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Trump announced the nomination in a post on Truth Social, where he reprised his attacks on the labor statistics agency. The president said the bureau to date had been led by “WEAK and STUPID people” and had produced “VERY inaccurate numbers.”
Mr. Matsumoto, whose nomination must still be confirmed by the Senate, earned his doctorate in economics from the University of North Carolina in 2015 and has worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics ever since, most recently conducting research related to the measurement of inflation. He has spent the past year on assignment at the Council of Economic Advisers, a fairly standard practice for government economists.
William Beach, who ran the agency during the first Trump administration and had been critical of Mr. Antoni’s selection, said Mr. Matsumoto was a good choice for the job.
“Thank God,” Mr. Beach said. “This is what we needed, is something a little more conventional.”
Erica Groshen, who was commissioner during the Obama administration, also praised the selection.
“He’s a B.L.S.-er, he’s a data nerd,” she said.
Omair Sharif, the founder of Inflation Insights, a forecasting firm, wrote in a note to clients that Mr. Matsumoto is a “smart, skilled research economist who understands the nuances of the data, particularly with respect to inflation.”
Mr. Matsumoto’s résumé is in many ways similar to that of Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner whom Mr. Trump fired in August. Ms. McEntarfer, too, was a respected veteran of the statistical system — in her case, at the Census Bureau — who had also spent time at the Council of Economic Advisers.
Mr. Trump ousted Ms. McEntarfer after her agency reported unexpectedly weak jobs numbers, accusing her without evidence of being biased against him. A broad range of experts rejected that suggestion, noting that the commissioner is not involved in producing the monthly estimates.
The firing, and Mr. Antoni’s subsequent nomination, raised concerns that Mr. Trump would seek to interfere in the agency’s operations and perhaps try to skew its estimates to his political advantage.
There is no evidence that has happened so far. The agency has been run since August by William Wiatrowski, its longtime deputy commissioner, who also led the bureau on an interim basis under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Economists continue to view the numbers the agency produces as reliable.
Still, Mr. Matsumoto, if confirmed, will take over an agency that is struggling amid high rates of attrition and low levels of morale. Many senior positions are currently vacant, and the agency has had to cut back data collection in some areas because of insufficient staffing levels.
The bureau is also still recovering from the monthlong federal government shutdown last fall, which forced it to delay many of its data releases and cancel others outright. The agency failed to produce the unemployment rate in October for the first time in the statistic’s 77-year history.
The bureau, like other federal statistical agencies, also faces challenges that long predate Mr. Trump’s return to office, including shrinking budgets and declining response rates to the surveys that are the source for much government data.
Economists and statistical experts have said that the agencies need to adopt new methods for collecting data that rely less on surveys and that do a better job of capturing the modern economy.
But those kinds of reforms will be difficult if the public does not trust the statistical agencies to produce numbers that are free of bias, Ms. Groshen said. That confidence was undermined when Ms. McEntarfer was fired, she said, and Mr. Matsumoto will have to rebuild it.
“There are a lot of things that go into trust, but professional competence and transparency are a very important part of that,” Ms. Groshen said.
Tony Romm contributed reporting.
Ben Casselman is the chief economics correspondent for The Times. He has reported on the economy for nearly 20 years.
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