Donald Trump’s sacking of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ boss after a grim jobs report earlier this month sparked investor fears that he was politicising the world’s most closely watched economic data.
Trump’s pick to lead the BLS, EJ Antoni, a fierce loyalist and cheerleader for the president’s tariffs and economic strategy, has only deepened the anxiety.
“The hope was that he 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 right-leaning American Enterprise Institute think-tank. “EJ Antoni is really the opposite of that.”
“Even the people who may be somewhat sympathetic to his economic policy views don’t think he’s qualified,” added Veuger.
Trump nominated Antoni, an economist at the rightwing Heritage Foundation — the think-tank behind the Project 2025 blueprint for Trump’s second term — to the BLS job on Monday.
The pick came less than two weeks after Trump fired Erika McEntarfer and claimed, without citing any evidence, that she had “rigged” the July jobs report that showed the labour market to be weaker than thought.
Trump said Antoni, who will need to be approved by the US Senate, would “ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE”.
Even economists on the political right doubt that a man they characterise as an inexperienced stooge of the president will fulfil that mission.
“The sad thing is that there are countless competent, respected conservative economists (especially at universities) who could do a terrific job running BLS,” wrote Jessica Riedl, a former Heritage fellow now at the conservative Manhattan Institute.
“But no credible economist would take a job in which you’d get fired for publishing accurate data.”
The BLS commissioner runs an organisation of about 2,000 employees who produce a monthly jobs report and the consumer price index inflation figure. The two reports are among the most important data points for global investors trying to read the health of the world’s biggest economy and are used for everything from setting US pension payouts to Federal Reserve policy.
Antoni has described BLS data as “BS” and previously suggested it should scrap the jobs report. When Fox News drew attention to some of those comments on Tuesday, the dollar lost some value.
The BLS job has often gone to candidates with statistical expertise, garnering them bipartisan support. Former commissioner McEntarfer, who had spent 20 years at the US Census Bureau before taking on the BLS role, passed the Senate in an 86-8 vote in early 2024, with support from vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio.
Trump picked another former Heritage economist, William Beach, in his first term, but his selection brough far less alarm about whether crucial economic data would be trustworthy.
“People were concerned about Beach, but it wasn’t anything like this. I mean people are really upset,” said Philippa Dunne, a labour market economist at TLR Analytics.
“It’s that the rest of the world is not going to trust our data. And if they don’t trust us, they’re not going to lend us money.”
Antoni, who completed a PhD in economics at Northern Illinois University in 2020, has been an ardent supporter of the president and his policies.
He has slammed critics as “naysayers” and “leftwing apologist[s]”. He claimed, echoing Trump, that the BLS was “grossly — and consistently — overstating” jobs growth in the Biden years.
He has also echoed the president’s complaints about Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell, saying he had “conspired to create the worst inflation in more than four decades”.
“If anyone ever deserved to lose his or her job, it’s Powell,” Antoni wrote in July.
Veuger at the AEI suggested fealty to the president was a main reason for Trump’s pick.
“Their bench of people they think of as loyal enough and who have an econ PhD is pretty thin,” he said.
Taylor Rogers, a spokesperson for the White House, said Trump had picked Antoni for his “education and vast experience as an economist”, noting that he had “frequently testified before Congress on economic issues and his research has been featured by many think-tanks and advocacy groups”.
Some economists are sanguine about Antoni’s nomination, saying it would be difficult for any BLS chief on their own to compromise the data.
“The BLS has a template of how they collect data and report it,” said Steve Hanke, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who served as an economic adviser to Ronald Reagan. “Whoever is at the top is pretty much irrelevant. The bureaucracy and the template dictate what goes on.”
Hanke added: “The idea that you can blatantly manipulate the data is frankly just rubbish.”
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But if the market doubts the independence of Trump’s BLS it could also just drive a shift to private providers, said some analysts.
“My sense here is that the potential appointment and confirmation of EJ Antoni creates conditions whereby investors and market participants will begin to doubt the veracity and reliability of BLS data,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM.
“One should expect demand for private-label data to increase . . . [it’s] going to become quite the cottage industry going forward.”
Derek Tang, economist at LH Meyer, warned of a scenario akin to the cable TV and internet revolutions, with people cherry-picking sources to match their pre-existing views.
“Everyone will be creating their own truth,” he said.
Additional reporting by Ian Hodgson in Washington