President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) would consider suspending the government’s monthly jobs report, one of the most-watched indicators of U.S. economic health. E.J. Antoni told Fox Business that the reports should stop until methods can be improved.
The interview with Antoni was recorded before Trump nominated him to take over the BLS, Fox said. His comments mirrored Trump’s claims that the job numbers were inaccurate.
“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?” Antoni told Fox News Digital. “It’s a serious problem that needs to be fixed immediately.”
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Antoni currently works as the chief economist for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Trump nominated him after his controversial firing of Erika McEntarfer, the former head of the BLS.
“Friday’s removal of the BLS commissioner is completely unprecedented in American history,” Aaron Sojourner, labor economist at the Uptown Institute for Employment Research, a nonpartisan research organization based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, told Straight Arrow News. “It’s never happened at the BLS. It’s never happened at another statistical agency, economic statistical agency. You know, early in the administration, they fired the head of the National Center for Education Statistics. So, we’ve seen a series of attacks on official statistical agencies, and I think this was another escalation in that set of attacks.”
Trump accused McEntarfer of falsifying job numbers to make Republicans look, bad but provided no evidence. He announced his choice of Antoni on social media.
“Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE,” Trump said. “I know E.J. Antoni will do an incredible job in this new role.”
Antoni’s appointment requires Senate confirmation.
Monthly jobs report
The monthly jobs report is used by numerous industries, both public and private, as a real-time measuring stick of the U.S. economy. Losing access to those numbers would impact those who rely on them.
“Suppressing that data is like gouging out our eyes,” Sojourner said.
“It would affect every part of the U.S. economy,” he added. “This data is used by Wall Street to make investment decisions. You can see that show up right away in market prices. But it also affects employers, decisions about whether to hire, whether to lay off, whether to invest in certain products or product lines in certain areas.”
The jobs report has come out monthly since the 1940s, with some exceptions, including World War II and various government shutdowns.
“I can’t think of any reason to suspend monthly jobs reports except as a political strategy for trying to control spin about the economy,” Gordon Lafer, professor at the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon, told SAN. “Even if one had concerns about making the reports more statistically accurate, if you want to adjust the statistical formula, that shouldn’t make any difference as to whether you issue reports monthly or quarterly.”
Job report statistics
Antoni criticized the reliability of the data, saying that it is frequently overstated. He did not go as far as the president, who claimed they are intentionally manipulated.
“The fact that you consistently have large downward revisions means that there are other things wrong with your models and methodologies,” Antoni said. “Statistical assumptions that may have worked fine before COVID no longer work in today’s economy and therefore need to be revised.”
While considering suspending the monthly reports, Antoni said quarterly reports would continue.
Lafer said the BLS arrives at its monthly numbers from both a real-time survey and a projection based on recent trends.
“This is designed to avoid the problem of having month-to-month irregularities in the data end up affecting the numbers in ways that they shouldn’t,” he said. “But building in past trends into the projection also means that the model is slower to correct for genuinely sudden changes. I believe that’s what happened with the past year’s numbers — the changes were originally understated, and then corrected for. This means that the revised numbers, the ones the president is attacking as ‘rigged,’ are the most accurate. Some version of this issue is going to happen in any sophisticated model.”
With so many industries looking at these numbers, accuracy is important.
“There’s only one political appointee who works at the agency, everybody else is like career technical staff, hired and retained based on expertise and productivity,” Sojourner said. “The fact that they are independent from politics is the foundation of their credibility. And if that’s compromised, there’s not nothing of value that they can do. You know, if they turn into a propaganda organ, that erases their value for the economy.”
