It was clear that something bad was in store for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) when Trump fired the head of the agency after the BLS reported poor job creation numbers recently. That's Trump's style: fire the messenger when they report an accurate message that the Dictator in Chief doesn't like.
Today the bad thing came into view. Trump has nominated an unqualified MAGA loyalist, E.J. Antoni, to be the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This is unheard of, since the BLS is a nonpartisan agency that is known for producing world-class high quality statistics on the United States economy, notably including employment and inflation figures. Investors, business leaders, government officials, and ordinary citizens rely on these data to provide an accurate picture of where the economy has been, where it is now, and what direction it may be heading.
Justin Wolfers, a competent economist, unlike Antoni, is scathing in his criticism of Antoni in this post on X.
A Politico story, "Trump taps Heritage economist to lead BLS," contains an astounding quote from Antoni that shows how unqualified he is to oversee the collection of vital economic data.
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.
…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.”
So Antoni believes that public sentiment and public feelings about the economy count more than carefully collected data. Hopefully these sorts of quotes will lead some Republican senators to vote against his confirmation as BLS commissioner — though hopes usually are dashed when it comes to Republican politicians going against Trump's authoritarian desires.
The only good news here is that the investing and business communities are dependent on reliable economic data to make decisions about where to put their money. If they learn that the Trump administration is cooking the economic books in an attempt to make Trump's policies look better, the reaction of stock and bond markets will be a massive downturn.
A New York Times story, "Trump, Seeking Friendlier Economic Data, Names New Statistics Chief," says:
Economists on both the left and right of the political spectrum say it is critical that the heads of the statistical agencies are seen as politically neutral
Many cited William W. Beach, who led the Bureau of Labor Statistics during the first Trump administration, as a model to follow. A conservative economist with decades of experience working for right-leaning think tanks, he was also widely praised for his nonpartisan leadership, and has condemned Dr. McEntarfer’s dismissal.
Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the commissioner doesn’t necessarily have to be well-known, or come from an elite institution — but they must not be seen as carrying water for the White House.
“Is this person perceived to be independent of the president and independent of partisan political considerations?” Mr. Strain said. “That’s the whole ballgame here.”
Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist for J.P. Morgan, agreed. “What you don’t want is someone who has just been a long time loyalist without any obvious skills on the job,” he said in an interview before Mr. Trump announced Dr. Antoni’s nomination.
Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, previously insisted the administration was “absolutely not” trying to shoot the messenger on the heels of a poor jobs report.
But Mr. Trump’s stated reasons for sacking Dr. McEntarfer may make it harder for the next commissioner to convince the public that he or she will stick to the facts, even if the numbers are unflattering to President Trump.
Still, it would not be easy for a new commissioner to skew the work of the agency’s many civil servants, at least not without it being obvious both to outside observers and to the career officials working inside the agency.
Economists will be scrutinizing the data for any hints of interference: numbers that stop getting published, tables that are altered without clear explanations, methodological changes that aren’t clearly documented. And they will also be watching for changes within the bureau itself.
“If the new commissioner comes in and you see either a lot of firings or a lot of resignations at the levels one and two below that person, that is certainly not something that would engender confidence,” Mr. Feroli said.
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