New York
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Hours earlier than President Donald Trump fired former Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer this month, E.J. Antoni appeared on former White House strategist Steve Bannon’s podcast to debate the BLS’ monthly jobs report, which confirmed much-lower-than-expected numbers for July and shockingly steep revisions for May and June.
Antoni referred to as McEntarfer “incompetent” for failing to repair information assortment and interpretation issues at the BLS which have led to main revisions lately. He agreed with Bannon on the answer: A MAGA Republican who “Trump knows and trusts” needs to be put into the place.
“We still haven’t gotten there,” Antoni stated of a Trump loyalist operating the BLS. “And I think that’s part of the reason why we continue to have all of these different data problems.”
On Monday, Antoni grew to become that trusted ally when Trump nominated him to change into the new commissioner for the BLS. It’s the newest instance of Trump’s appointment of loyalists to in any other case nonpartisan or impartial businesses. Some of these appointments have labored to radically reshape the establishments they had been chosen to steer.
BLS, an independently operated company inside the Department of Labor, collects and publishes essential information on jobs and inflation utilized by companies, traders and governments. Antoni, an economist at the conservative assume tank the Heritage Foundation and contributor to Project 2025, has been an outspoken critic of the method BLS collects that information.
“There are better ways to collect, process, and disseminate data—that is the task for the next BLS 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,” Antoni posted on X final week.
In explicit, Antoni has criticized the BLS for failing to seize ample and immediate information in the post-pandemic period. By legislation, besides in a handful of states and Puerto Rico, participation in the survey for the month-to-month jobs report is voluntary. But survey response rates have tumbled since Covid – from 60% in January 2020 to lower than 43% for the April 2025 report.
Antoni has additionally echoed a frequent Trump criticism of the BLS, claiming that latest huge annual revisions – together with a revision that confirmed 589,000 fewer jobs had been created in 2024 than initially reported – gave former President Joe Biden favorable headlines every month that critics say he didn’t deserve.
“Under the Biden administration … we routinely got a great number – a blockbuster number – initially, and then in the subsequent months that number would be revised down, and then when it was time for an annual revision, the figures would be revised down further. In other words, millions of jobs that we thought we had, it turns out were never there in the first place,” Antoni said in July on “The Right Idea,” a Texas Publicly Policy Foundation podcast. “Of course, no one pays attention to the revisions months later, so it always is just that blockbuster headline and then quietly revising those numbers down.”
That revision was not a file, as Trump has falsely claimed: A 902,000-job revision in 2009 was larger. The BLS stated the distinction between the preliminary and last annual revisions final yr was resulting from info obtained in US tax returns.
Antoni called post-pandemic financial information “highly problematic.” The BLS has warned cuts issued by the Department of Government Efficiency have disrupted the information assortment that feeds into the authorities’s reviews. Yet Antoni has applauded the work by DOGE in slicing authorities jobs.
His criticisms of the BLS return years. In a 2022 blog post, he referred to as a strategy change for the BLS’ Consumer Price Index an “Orwellian trick” to masks increased inflation.
Antoni is a favourite of conservatives and makes frequent appearances on right-wing media retailers. In addition to his work at the Heritage Foundation and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, he’s an opinion columnist for the Daily Caller and visitor on Bannon’s present.
The Heritage Foundation praised Trump’s choice of Antoni to run the BLS.
“EJ Antoni is one of the sharpest economic minds in the nation—a fearless truth-teller who grasps that sound economics must serve the interests of American families, not globalist elites,” stated Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, in an announcement. “I can confidently say that his nomination as the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is a stellar choice by President Trump.”
But Trump’s firing of McEntarfer and nominating of Antoni have been met with swift backlash from many economists, who fear about the credibility and non-partisan nature of the bureau. Trump accused McEntarfer – who was appointed by former President Joe Biden to the function of commissioner in 2023 and confirmed by a bipartisan Senate vote – of manipulating jobs information with out providing any proof.
“E.J. Antoni is completely unqualified to be BLS Commissioner. He is an extreme partisan and does not have any relevant expertise. He would be a break from decades of nonpartisan technocrats,” economist Jason Furman posted on X.
Another economist, Justin Wolfers, called Antoni “disastrously terrible” and wrote that he has “few credentials beyond a long history of misrepresenting or misunderstanding basic economic statistics.”
NCS has reached out to Antoni for remark.