E.J. Antoni, President Donald Trump’s latest pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), has ignited controversy in Washington and on Wall Street after publicly suggesting he may suspend the agency’s closely watched monthly jobs report over concerns about its accuracy and methodology. In an interview with Fox News Digital on Aug. 4, before his nomination, Antoni said that until the report is “corrected,” the BLS “should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data.”
The move comes in the wake of Trump’s abrupt firing of Erika McEntarfer, the previous BLS commissioner, following a report that revealed not only disappointing job growth for July, but sharp downward revisions for prior months.
