What happened
E.J. Antoni, the conservative economist President Donald Trump named Monday as his pick to lead the nonpartisan Bureau of Labor Statistics, suggested scrapping the BLS's closely watched monthly jobs report in an Aug. 4 interview with Fox News Digital published Tuesday.
Who said what
Until its "fundamentally flawed" data collection methodologies are "corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data," Antoni told Fox News Digital. Halting the monthly report would deprive "businesses and policymakers" of the "data they've used for decades to gauge the state of the labor market and broader economy," The Washington Post said.
Many economists "share, to some degree, Antoni's concerns" about the government's jobs data, due largely to "trends such as declining response rates to its surveys," The Associated Press said. But economists "from across the political spectrum" said an inexperienced "conservative ideologue" was the wrong person to tackle the issue. Antoni has "nothing in his writing or his résumé to suggest that he's qualified for the position, besides that he is always manipulating the data to favor Trump in some way," said Brian Albrecht, the chief economist at the International Center for Law and Economics.
What next?
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt Tuesday called Antoni an "economic expert" who had earned Trump's trust, but said she believed "the plan" and "the hope" was for the BLS to continue releasing the monthly jobs numbers.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Russia tries Ukraine land grab before Trump summitSpeed Read The incursion may be part of Putin's efforts to boost his bargaining position
-
August 13 editorial cartoonsCartoons Wednesday’s political cartoons include no age limit on ICE joiners, GOP paving over democracy, and the return of the QAnon Shaman
-
Aimee Betro: the Wisconsin woman who came to Birmingham to killIn the Spotlight US hitwoman wore a niqab in online lover's revenge plot
-
The NCAA is a 'billion-dollar sports behemoth' that 'should not be a nonprofit'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Trump picks conservative BLS critic to lead BLSspeed read He has nominated the Heritage Foundation's E.J. Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics
-
Trump takes over DC police, deploys National GuardSpeed Read The president blames the takeover on rising crime, though official figures contradict this concern
-
Trump hikes tariffs despite economic warning signsFeature Donald Trump signed an executive order raising import taxes to the highest level in over a century, as U.S. job growth continues to lag
-
Trump sends FBI to patrol DC, despite falling crimeSpeed Read Washington, D.C., 'has become one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world,' Trump said
-
Trump officials reinstating 2 Confederate monumentsSpeed Read The administration has plans to 'restore Confederate names and symbols' discarded in the wake of George Floyd's 2020 murder
-
Trump nominates Powell critic for vacant Fed seatspeed read Stephen Miran, the chair of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers and a fellow critic of Fed chair Jerome Powell, has been nominated to fill a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
-
ICE scraps age limits amid hiring pushSpeed Read Anyone 18 or older can now apply to be an ICE agent
