Trump’s Pick for BLS Floats Suspending Monthly Jobs Report. Economists See Risks.

President Donald Trump said he would nominate E.J. Antoni, an economist at the Heritage Foundation, as the next head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Photo: Courtesy Texas Public Policy Foundation

E.J. Antoni, whom President Donald Trump plans to nominate as the next head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has proposed pausing publication of the monthly payroll report until the data can be made more reliable. That could make it more difficult for economists and Federal Reserve officials to gauge economic conditions.

Trump announced Monday night that he would nominate Antoni, currently chief economist of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, to head the statistics agency. Senate confirmation could come as soon as October.

Antoni proposed the temporary suspension of the monthly payroll report in an interview with Fox News Digital published Tuesday. “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,” he said.

“Until it is corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data,” Antoni added. “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.”

The BLS is required by law to publish monthly estimates, says Michael Pearce, deputy chief U.S. economist for Oxford Economics. “The Bureau of Labor Statistics shall also collect, collate, report, and publish at least once each month full and complete statistics of the volume of and changes in employment” according to the statute, he says.

“There is nothing in law that would prevent them publishing data with a longer lag,” Pearce says, noting the BLS could wait until November to publish the August employment data, for example, rather than publishing an initial estimate in September, then revising it in October and November.

The suspension of publication of real-time monthly employment data, such as unemployment, payroll changes, and wage growth, could create challenges for the Fed, economists say. “Without the monthly payroll numbers from the BLS, it would be harder for the Fed to assess labor market conditions in real time,” said Claudia Sahm, chief economist for New Century Advisors. “Monetary policy would continue [to be enacted], but the risks of making a mistake would rise.”

Economists and investors would likely turn to private data providers such as ADP or Indeed to estimate U.S. labor market conditions, says Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM US. “It would be disruptive to a point, but not destabilizing for the Fed that has deep and abiding access to data the public doesn’t have,” he says.

Pearce says the BLS hasn’t delayed publication of the initial monthly estimates of payrolls, even though revisions are likely, because “eliminating some of the best early estimates we have would worsen the quality of that data—and would have downstream impacts on other statistics that rely on those early estimates,” he says.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that it is “the plan and that’s the hope” for the BLS to continue publishing monthly jobs reports. “As you know, the president has appointed someone new to take over the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And so we need to look at the means and the methods of how the United States is acquiring this very important data. And all of that is going to be done,” Leavitt said.

Antoni is slated to succeed Erika McEntarfer if he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The nomination comes less than two weeks after Trump fired McEntarfer on Aug. 1, suggesting the Bureau “rigged” the jobs data, although he provided no evidence of such manipulation. White House advisor Steve Bannon publicly pushed for Antoni to take charge of the BLS, and The Wall Street Journal reported this past weekend that administration officials were interviewing him.

Brian Gardner, Stifel’s chief Washington policy strategist, told Barron’s that if Antoni’s confirmation process follows the normal procedure, his nomination will go before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions for a committee vote, and then, if supported, to a floor vote. Assuming all goes smoothly, Gardner said, the next BLS commissioner will likely be in place by mid- to late-October.

Several potential factors could slow or halt the process, including a potential government shutdown in early October.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said on Aug. 1 that William Wiatrowski, the deputy commissioner of the BLS, would serve as acting commissioner until a new commissioner is installed.

Former BLS commissioners William Beach and Erica Groshen, in a statement to Barron’s on Tuesday, raised concerns that Antoni and his work aren’t well-known in the business, academic or public-service communities. They said they are hoping the coming hearings will provide more information on his management experience and background in economic statistics, and how he plans to engage with other federal statistical agencies.

If a candidate can garner broad, bipartisan support in the Senate, “such support would demonstrate their suitability,” they said.

Antoni, a contributor to Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation blueprint for reshaping the government, previously held positions on the Committee to Unleash Prosperity and the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He earned master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from Northern Illinois University. Antoni didn’t respond to Barron’s requests for comment.

Antoni has published a number of commentaries favoring the Trump administration and has previously critiqued what he described as “egregious biases” in the BLS data. Just last week, he posted on social media that “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.”

Stephen Miran, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, whom Trump has nominated to the Federal Reserve to complete the term of Fed Gov. Adriana Kugler, cheered the nomination on Tuesday. “We need to make these statistics reliable. We need to make them believable. We need to make them credible. And I’m really delighted that we’re shaping up to be able to do that,” Miran told CNBC.

Antoni’s Heritage Foundation colleague, Steve Moore, gave a presentation in the Oval Office on Aug. 7, saying the president “did the right thing” in removing McEntarfer because the BLS overestimated job creation by 1.5 million jobs during the final two years of President Joe Biden’s term. “That’s a gigantic error,” Moore said at the time.

While Miran, Moore, and others have characterized the BLS monthly payroll revisions as “errors” and “mistakes,” the agency has been routinely updating the monthly job growth figures since 1979. Initial monthly payroll estimates, typically released on the first Friday of every month, are revised twice as additional survey responses from businesses and other information become available.

The payroll estimates also undergo an annual benchmarking process to align them with more comprehensive data from administrative sources, including unemployment insurance systems.

Antoni has written that monthly job reports in recent years have been “grossly—and consistently—overstating the growth of nonfarm payrolls in the initial estimates.”

“It’s unacceptable that these data are unreliable when major market movers (including the Federal Reserve) depend on the accuracy of these figures when making consequential decisions. The Labor Department needs to address this ugly issue immediately so we can better assess if future job reports are good or bad,” Antoni wrote in June.

Corrections & Amplifications: E.J. Antoni was interviewed by Fox News Digital. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said he was interviewed by Fox Business.

Write to Megan Leonhardt at megan.leonhardt@barrons.com