E.J. Antoni made a name for himself in MAGA circles as a Bureau of Labor Statistics skeptic and vocal defender of President Donald Trump’s protectionist agenda. Now, Trump has enlisted the partisan warrior to lead one of the most apolitical arms of the federal government.
Economic experts across the ideological spectrum are questioning whether Antoni has the professional or managerial expertise necessary to run an agency of 2,000-plus staffers and produce economic reports that are critical to public policy and business decisions.
Previous stewards of the BLS have typically had extensive resumes in academia or in prominent economic roles within government. Antoni — who received his PhD in economics in 2020 — has spent most of his relatively short career at conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Texas Public Policy Foundation. He has become a fixture on conservative talk radio and podcasts — including Steve Bannon’s “War Room” — and frequently pens pro-Trump commentary on topics ranging from immigration and housing to international trade and the Department of Government Efficiency.
The partisan trench fighting that has defined his work to date is without precedent among those who have become BLS commissioners, said Erica Groshen, who led the bureau during the Obama years. And scrutiny of Antoni will be particularly acute after Trump’s firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer — a move that shocked economists and Wall Street investors — after claiming without evidence that she had “rigged” labor market data to help Democrats.
“The issues that are most important for BLS commissioners to be dealing with really don't have anything to do with these partisan policy concerns,” Groshen said. That “will make it more difficult for him to make changes at BLS that are needed, because people are more likely to be suspicious that there are underlying motives.”
Those suspicions were further inflamed Tuesday after Fox News Digital published an interview conducted a week before Trump’s announcement in which Antoni said the BLS should suspend its monthly jobs report and instead rely on quarterly figures until the data is "corrected.” A change of that magnitude would be enormously disruptive to the Federal Reserve — which relies on the report to inform its decision-making on interest rates — as well as to Wall Street trading firms and other companies whose business decisions depend on accurate and timely economic information.
Halting the monthly numbers would be a “huge disaster,” according to Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “It would signal that the agency is attempting to advance a partisan agenda. ... Businesses also make lots of decisions based on the monthly data. Reducing the frequency of the data would make it much harder for them to make profitable decisions.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shot down Antoni's proposal in an appearance on Bloomberg on Wednesday morning but added that Trump's nominee is "incredibly qualified."
"E.J. is precise. He has a doctorate in economics. I think President Trump put a lot of thought into this. He put a lot of thought in his questioning of him," Bessent said.
Antoni did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
William Beach faced a similar vein of initial concern when Trump nominated him to lead the BLS during his first term, stemming from his work for George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis. But many observers now point to Beach as a model to emulate for a GOP-appointed commissioner.
“His nomination and my nomination have a lot of parallelisms,” said Beach, who has openly criticized Trump for firing McEntarfer. “He needs to state from Day 1 what his goals are, and it should not be to make the data better for President Trump.”
Setting aside the recent political turmoil, BLS has been showing signs of strain for years. Response rates to surveys that feed into its inflation and employment reports have fallen steadily over the last decade, which has limited its ability to track the health of the economy in real time. Trump’s government-wide hiring freeze and reduction-in-force programs have exacerbated worker shortages. Since the spring, the agency has cut back data-collection efforts and eliminated non-essential economic gauges.
Voluntary advisory committees that assisted the BLS and other statistical agencies with methodology and operations were eliminated in the spring, which could curb the agency's ability to build credibility with economists and industry leaders who use its reports.
Beach said the BLS has room for improvement but that many of the solutions require additional resources. He added that it would benefit Antoni to leverage Trump’s trust to make that case.
“His challenges are greater than most, but if he manages to succeed, we may look back on this as a real opportunity,” Beach said.
Antoni’s comments about pausing the monthly jobs report are likely to contribute to those challenges. The Senate HELP Committee has several GOP members who have occasionally opposed Trump and controversial nominees of his, including Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.
Democrats on the committee are pushing for a full hearing for Antoni, providing a platform for him to articulate his views — and the possibility that he will say something that would dent his chances.
“E.J. Antoni is an unqualified right-wing extremist who won’t think twice about manipulating BLS data and degrading the credibility of the agency to make Trump happy — and has already suggested shelving important data entirely,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who previously led the committee, said in a statement.
Stephen Moore, a former Trump adviser and a senior visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said Antoni is a “straight shooter” who will “call the balls and strikes fairly.” When informed of Antoni’s suggestion to hit pause on monthly labor reports, he said he was unaware of it.
“We need the monthly statistics,” Moore said. “I'd have to talk to him about that. I don't know what the rationale for that [would be]. My instinct is that that would be a bad idea.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday that Antoni is a “qualified individual, and the president trusts him.”
“This president wants to ensure that the BLS is putting out accurate and honest data,” she said.
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