Here's how Trump's BLS commissioner pick has criticized the BLS

CNN

6 days ago

Hours before President Donald Trump fired former Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer this month, E.J. Antoni appeared on former White House strategist Steve Bannon's podcast to discuss the BLS' monthly jobs report, which showed much-lower-than-expected numbers for July and shockingly steep revisions for May and June.
Antoni called McEntarfer 'incompetent' for failing to fix data collection and interpretation problems at the BLS that have led to major revisions in recent years. He agreed with Bannon on the solution: A MAGA Republican who 'Trump knows and trusts' should be put into the position.
'We still haven't gotten there,' Antoni said of a Trump loyalist running the BLS. 'And I think that's part of the reason why we continue to have all of these different data problems.'
On Monday, Antoni became that trusted ally when Trump nominated him to become the new commissioner for the BLS. It's the latest example of Trump's appointment of loyalists to otherwise nonpartisan or independent agencies. Some of those appointments have worked to radically reshape the institutions they were chosen to lead.
BLS, an independently operated agency within the Department of Labor, collects and publishes crucial data on jobs and inflation used by businesses, investors and governments. Antoni, an economist at the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and contributor to Project 2025, has been an outspoken critic of the way BLS collects that data.
'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,' Antoni posted on X last week.
In particular, Antoni has criticized the BLS for failing to capture sufficient and prompt data in the post-pandemic era. By law, except in a handful of states and Puerto Rico, participation in the survey for the monthly jobs report is voluntary. But survey response rates have tumbled since Covid – from 60% in January 2020 to less than 43% for the April 2025 report.
Antoni has also echoed a frequent Trump criticism of the BLS, claiming that recent massive annual revisions – including a revision that showed 589,000 fewer jobs were created in 2024 than initially reported – gave former President Joe Biden favorable headlines each month that critics say he didn't deserve.
'Under the Biden administration … we routinely got a great number – a blockbuster number – initially, and then in the subsequent months that number would be revised down, and then when it was time for an annual revision, the figures would be revised down further. In other words, millions of jobs that we thought we had, it turns out were never there in the first place,' Antoni said in July on 'The Right Idea,' a Texas Publicly Policy Foundation podcast. 'Of course, no one pays attention to the revisions months later, so it always is just that blockbuster headline and then quietly revising those numbers down.'
That revision was not a record, as Trump has falsely claimed: A 902,000-job revision in 2009 was larger. The BLS said the difference between the initial and final annual revisions last year was due to information received in US tax returns.
Antoni called post-pandemic economic data 'highly problematic.' The BLS has warned cuts issued by the Department of Government Efficiency have disrupted the data collection that feeds into the government's reports. Yet Antoni has applauded the work by DOGE in cutting government jobs.
His criticisms of the BLS go back years. In a 2022 blog post, he called a methodology change for the BLS' Consumer Price Index an 'Orwellian trick' to mask higher inflation.
Antoni is a favorite of conservatives and makes frequent appearances on right-wing media outlets. In addition to his work at the Heritage Foundation and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, he is an opinion columnist for the Daily Caller and guest on Bannon's show.
But Trump's firing of McEntarfer and nominating of Antoni have been met with swift backlash from many economists, who worry about the credibility and non-partisan nature of the bureau. Trump accused McEntarfer – who was appointed by former President Joe Biden to the role of commissioner in 2023 and confirmed by a bipartisan Senate vote – of manipulating jobs data without offering any evidence.
'E.J. Antoni is completely unqualified to be BLS Commissioner. He is an extreme partisan and does not have any relevant expertise. He would be a break from decades of nonpartisan technocrats,' economist Jason Furman posted on X.
Another economist, Justin Wolfers, called Antoni 'disastrously terrible' and wrote that he has 'few credentials beyond a long history of misrepresenting or misunderstanding basic economic statistics.'
CNN has reached out to Antoni for comment.