President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he planned to name EJ Antoni as the new commissioner of the Office of Labor Statistics.
Trump said in a social publication of the truth that “he will ensure that the published numbers are honest and precise.”
Antoni’s planned nomination occurs after Trump dismissed former commissioner Erika Mtientfer hours after a weakest job report than expected on August 1. Trump said, without evidence, that the job report for July was “manipulated so that Republicans and I seem bad.”
Antoni did not immediately respond to the request for comments from NBC News on Monday. He is the chief economist of the Heritage Conservative Foundation and has written a series of pieces for the group of experts who are highly complementary to the Trump administration.
One of Antoni’s recent reports said the June job report, before reviewing, was a “home run” for the president.
Steve Bannon, a Trump’s main advisor in his first mandate, had been pressing hard for the nomination of Antoni. Antoni, a taxpayer to the 2025 project policy rubric, has been a BLS data skeptic for a long time. In the Podcast of Bannon last week, Antoni asked Mcentarfer to be fired shortly before Trump pressed the trigger.
Multiple former BLS commissioners said after the dismissal of Mtientefer that the head of labor statistics does not have a role in the compilation of the job report and is only informed about their figures shortly before the public is released.
In that report, the BLS reported that the US economy added only 73,000 jobs in July. The agency also said that it had reviewed the numbers of May and June and that it turned out to be lower than announced above, for more than 200,000 jobs.
The BLS routinely reviews economic data, such as the job report, gross figures of the domestic product and inflation data. Due to the scale of the United States economy and response rates to BLS surveys, there may often be delays in data collection. But that delay does not imply any irregularity or manipulation.
This is a development history. Consult the updates again.
