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groundloop

(13,226 posts) Mon Aug 11, 2025, 08:50 PM Aug 11

Trump selects Heritage Foundation's Antoni to head Bureau of Labor Statistics

Source: Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said he was nominating economist E.J. Antoni as the new Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, ten days after firing the statistics agency's previous leader after a weak scorecard of the U.S. job market, accusing her without evidence of manipulating the figures.

Antoni is currently the chief economist at the influential U.S. conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.

"Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE," Trump said on Truth Social.

Antoni, who must be confirmed by the Senate, takes over an agency that had a staff of 2,300 as of September 2024 and that has come under heightened scrutiny for the eroding quality of the data it produces. Its monthly figures about the state of the U.S. job market and inflation are consumed by a global audience of economists, investors, business leaders, public policymakers and consumers, and their release routinely has a visible and real-time effect on stock, bond and currency markets around the world.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-selects-heritage-foundations-antoni-head-bureau-labor-statistics-2025-08-11/

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Trump selects Heritage Foundation's Antoni to head Bureau of Labor Statistics (Original Post) groundloop Aug 11 OP

short term link: BLS nominee made claim that no 'sensible economist would use' - and that's one of the kinder comments Bernardo de La Paz Aug 12 #1

Bernardo de La Paz

(57,754 posts)

1. short term link: BLS nominee made claim that no 'sensible economist would use' - and that's one of the kinder comments

Reply to groundloop (Original post)

Tue Aug 12, 2025, 07:31 AM

Aug 12

Short term (24 hours appr) link for free:
https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/2025081224/bls-nominee-made-claim-that-no-sensible-economist-would-use-and-thats-one-of-the-kinder-comments

...
Jason Furman, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama, but also a critic of President Joe Biden's stimulus measures, said Antoni is "completely unqualified" and an "extreme partisan."

Jessica Riedl, a former Heritage Foundation research fellow now at the conservative Manhattan Institute, said his articles and tweets "are probably the most error-filled or any think tank economist right now." Jeremy Horpedahl of the libertarian Cato Institute said he "either massively misunderstands labor market data, or he is willing to lie repeatedly about after being corrected by dozens of economists." Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute, often described as a center-right think tank, called him "utterly unqualified and as partisan as it gets."

Ahead of his nomination, Antoni defended the firing of Erika McEntarfer as BLS commissioner and made the case for reform of the agency.

"That person has overseen problems in the data for three years now," he said on C-Span. "That has been confirmed by the fact the BLS will publish one series of number, and later, publish another series of data that contradicts it," he said.
...

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