General Discussion

But that’s not all he did. The president also vowed to nominate an even better BLS chief, and on Monday afternoon, the public learned of his choice: E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group that used to have a reputation as a prominent think tank. NBC News reported:

Steve Bannon, a senior adviser to Trump in his first term, had been pushing hard for Antoni’s nomination. Antoni, a contributor to the Project 2025 policy rubric, has been a longtime skeptic of BLS data. On Bannon’s podcast last week, Antoni called for McEntarfer to be fired shortly before Trump pulled the trigger. As chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, Antoni has written a number of pieces for the think tank that are highly complimentary of the Trump administration.

.....Jason Furman, for example, is an accomplished Harvard economist who chaired the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration, and he responded to Antoni’s nomination this way: “I don’t think I have ever publicly criticized any Presidential nominee before. But E.J. Antoni is completely unqualified to be BLS Commissioner. He is an extreme partisan and does not have any relevant expertise.”

Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan, added, “Let’s focus on qualifications: Antoni finished grad school 5 years ago at Northern Illinois with no distinction. Dissertation: No focus on labor or data collection. Zero publications. One lifetime citation (by a former colleague). This record would not earn you a job as junior economist at BLS.....

Going forward, everyone — from policymakers to economists, Federal Reserve officials to investors, business owners to regular ol’ American workers — will now have reason to question the integrity of the data from the U.S. government.