Trump taps Heritage economist to lead BLS

President Donald Trump said Monday that he will nominate Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni as the next commissioner of the embattled Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE,” the president posted on his Truth Social account. “I know E.J. Antoni will do an incredible job in this new role.”

The announcement comes a little more than a week after Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after claiming without evidence that she had rigged labor market data to boost Democrats.

Antoni, a conservative economist and longtime Trump booster, has been highly critical of the agency’s work going back to the presidential campaign — amplifying its missteps and portraying its reports as out-of-step with Americans' perceptions about the state of the economy.

In an appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast earlier this month, Antoni said the absence of a MAGA Republican atop BLS is “part of the reason why we continue to have all of these different data problems.”

The dismissal of McEntarfer — which stunned market participants and top economists — created a political firestorm around an agency that’s typically been insulated from outside influence. BLS is responsible for closely watched reports on inflation and the labor market and its autonomy has long been considered vital to its credibility.

But the agency has also faced serious challenges in recent years that have affected the quality of its data. Response to its surveys has fallen since the pandemic. Longstanding budget constraints have hampered modernization efforts, and Trump’s reelection introduced a hiring freeze that forced BLS to curtail data collection efforts and eliminate non-essential economic gauges.

Antoni will have to navigate the Senate HELP Committee, which is led by Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who has shepherded through dozens of Trump’s nominees to DOL and other agencies since January. However, a few selections have struggled to win over committee members including Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who have occasionally functioned as Trump antagonists .

“We need a BLS Commissioner committed to producing accurate, unbiased economic information to the American people,” Cassidy spokesperson Stephen Lewerenz said in a statement. “Chairman Cassidy looks forward to meeting with Dr. Antoni to discuss how he will accomplish this.”

Still, given the circumstances that led to McEntarfer’s dismissal — and growing concerns about the administration’s efforts to chip away at historically independent agencies — Antoni’s nomination will be the subject of considerable scrutiny.

Jason Furman, a former top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, said the Heritage economist is unqualified for the role.

“I do think it will be hard for him to make things worse, but I’ve no doubt he’ll try, and it’s even harder to imagine he could make anything better,” he said.

Antoni, who has worked at Heritage for more than three years, was previously a fellow at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a supply-side economics advocacy group founded by Steve Forbes, and worked as an economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Though he is among those on the right who have criticized BLS’s follow-up work showing less rosy figures than initially publicized, Antoni has often done so through a more political lens, arguing that the data was not lining up with the public’s sentiment about the state of the economy.

“The massive discrepancies occurring between official data and people’s opinion of the economy are not due to Americans’ having ‘wrong’ feelings about their finances, or a lack of understanding, as some pundits keep asserting,” he wrote in June 2024. “Rather, some of the official metrics do not align with reality.”

Antoni has offered some substantive critiques about BLS’ methodology being outmoded, including that the jobs numbers can effectively double count gig workers and others who hold multiple positions, potentially overstating certain gains.

He also characterized the job growth under former President Joe Biden as being fueled by foreign, rather than native-born, workers while highlighting shifts for both groups since Trump took office — trends that the White House has also trumpeted in its public messaging.

Since McEntarfer’s ouster at the beginning of the month, BLS has been helmed by William Wiatrowski. He has served as acting commissioner twice previously, from January 2017 to March 2019 during Trump’s first term, as well as for a little under a year before McEntarfer’s confirmation in 2024.