President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who previously proposed scrapping monthly jobs reports, is now backing off that idea, according to a report.
Trump tapped EJ Antoni, the chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, for the role after firing the agency’s last commissioner following her release of a poor July jobs report.
Antoni proposed suspending the release of the monthly jobs reports in an August 4 Fox Business interview, one week before he was nominated to be the next BLS commissioner.
He has since walked back on that proposal, CNN reported. Antoni will continue to issue monthly jobs numbers if confirmed, Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore told CNN Tuesday.
It’s not immediately clear what may have changed his mind. The Independent has reached out to the Heritage Foundation for more information.
Moore called Antoni’s proposal a “bad idea” and added the pair discussed the matter. “He’s backed off that,” Moore said. “We’re going to continue to do monthly numbers.”
In his Fox Business interview, Antoni slammed the agency for having unreliable data.
“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? It’s a serious problem that needs to be fixed immediately,” he said.
Antoni then suggested releasing data quarterly rather than monthly.
“Until it is corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data,” he continued.
Antoni appeared on Fox News days after Trump fired former agency commissioner Erika McEntarfer and criticized the jobs report as inaccurate, which showed the economy added only 73,000 jobs in July. The agency also revised down the reports for May and June, revealing a combined 258,000 fewer jobs than initially reported.
The president fumed about the latest figures, even claiming on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week that “the numbers were rigged.”
When announcing the nomination on Monday, Trump said in a Truth Social post that he believes Antoni “will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE.”
Asked on Tuesday if the Bureau of Labor Statistics will continue to issue monthly reports, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “I believe that is the plan, and that’s the hope, and that these monthly reports will be data that the American people can trust.”
