Meet the BLS nominee who economists on the left, right, and center agree is unqualified

E.J. Antoni’s CV could fit on the back of a business card: a PhD from Northern Illinois that was completed just five years ago, one peer-reviewed paper, a single academic citation. Yet — in a Truth Social post — he found himself nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the gold-standard data shop whose monthly releases on jobs, inflation, and prices move markets, shape the Federal Reserve’s policy, and inform everything from Social Security adjustments to corporate hiring plans. 

Within hours of Trump’s announcement, economists from across the political spectrum were questioning whether the nominee’s résumé, record, and recent remarks pointed to a commitment to the data — or to the person who appointed him.

“I am pleased to announce that I am nominating Highly Respected Economist, Dr. E.J. Antoni, as the next Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST AND ACCURATE.”

Trump abruptly fired former BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer following a July jobs report that showed weak hiring and significant downward revisions of prior months — numbers the president claimed, without evidence, were “rigged.” According to the Associated Press, BLS staffers reacted in internal emails with words such as “depressing” and “CRAZY!!,” rallying around the agency’s mission of impartial data reporting.

Antoni’s profile isn’t what BLS watchers are used to. McEntarfer’s work, for instance, has been cited more than 1,300 times in academic papers. Instead, the 37-year-old Antoni is currently the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation and a contributor to the right-wing Project 2025. Before that, Antoni’s path ran through conservative policy shops and media studios — including frequent hits on Fox and on Steve Bannon’s “War Room.”

The rare consensus: skepticism

But if his résumé is thin, the critiques are thick — and across the board, from liberals to independents to conservatives.

“He’s utterly unqualified and as partisan as it gets,” Stan Veuger, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), told The Washington Post.

Jason Furman, the former chair of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote on X that Antoni is “an extreme partisan and does not have any relevant expertise," adding, “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 would be a break from decades of nonpartisan technocrats.”

Justin Wolfers, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan, wrote on BlueSky that Antoni’s record “would not earn you a job as junior economist at BLS.” In a separate post on the social media site, he called Antoni “disastrously terrible,” adding that he has “few credentials beyond a history of misrepresenting or misunderstanding economic statistics. He has shown no commitment to truth.”

Antoni’s recently published pieces at Heritage include: “Inflation Is Down Since January and Should Keep Improving,” “U.S.-Japan Trade Deal Is a Masterpiece,” “Trump Hits Home Run With June’s Job Report,” “Back From the Brink: Trump’s Economy Soars Instead of Crashing,” “Elon Built the DOGE Rocket and It’s Going to Keep Flying,” “Problematic Powell: What To Do With the Worst Fed Chair in History,” and “Trump Wins the First Round Against Inflation.” 

AEI fellow Veuger told Axios that Antoni’s work at Heritage “has frequently included elementary errors or nonsensical choices that all bias his findings in the same partisan direction.” Kyle Pomerleau, another AEI economist told the New York Times, “[Antoni] has either shown a complete misunderstanding of economic data and principles, or he’s showing a willingness to treat his audience with contempt and mislead them.” Pomerleau also wrote on X: “There are a lot of competent conservative economists that could do this job. E.J. is not one of them.” 

Meanwhile, Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law & Economics, told the AP, “There’s just 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.” 

Even beyond questions about his professional credentials, Antoni may face problems because of social media posts that have surfaced in the past few days that show him on video calls with a Nazi battleship as his background. And NBC reported on Wednesday night that Antoni appeared in “numerous videos” of the crowd at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection. The BLS nominee declined to comment, but a White House official told the site that Antoni was just a “bystander.” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement to NBC that “EJ was in town for meetings, and it is wrong and defamatory to suggest EJ engaged in anything inappropriate or illegal.”

She previously told the New York Times that Antoni would “restore America’s trust in the jobs data” and that his “vast experience as an economist has prepared him to produce accurate public data for businesses, households, and policymakers to inform their decision-making.” Stephen Moore, a Trump-aligned economist who works with the nominee, texted Bloomberg that “EJ will be outstanding. Great economist and statistician.” 

Backed by the base

Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Trump in his first term, recently told Bloomberg that Antoni is “the perfect guy at the perfect time” to lead the BLS. After the disappointing July jobs report, Antoni joined Bannon’s show, and the host asked if there was a “MAGA Republican” running the BLS. Antoni replied, “No, unfortunately.” On a podcast episode earlier in the week, Bannon credited Antoni with “almost single-handedly” undermining the agency by scrutinizing its data.

Antoni has been a sharp critic of the BLS. Last year, he zeroed in on the agency’s health insurance figures, describing them as “phoney baloney” on social media and wrote that “the ‘L’ is silent” in BLS. In November, Antoni asked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to “take a chainsaw to the BLS,” and in a Fox interview a week before his nomination, he suggested that the agency should suspend its monthly employment reports and rely instead on “more accurate, though less timely” quarterly data until methods are “corrected.”

“The problems in the BLS data have been evident for three years now, and they still haven’t been fixed,” Antoni told Fox. Before his nomination, he told Bloomberg that the next commissioner — “whether it's me or anybody else” — should do everything in their power to procure “more accurate data, as timely as possible, as consistently as possible.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shot down Antoni’s proposal for quarterly figures in an appearance on Bloomberg TV on Wednesday morning but added that Trump’s nominee is “incredibly qualified.” Bessent said, “E.J. is precise. He has a doctorate in economics. I think President Trump put a lot of thought into this. He put a lot of thought in his questioning of him.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the “plan” and the “hope” is that “these monthly reports will be data that the American people can trust.”

The practical effects of a pause are already being gamed out because markets are sensitive to the cadence of information. Trump administration aides are trying to tamp down fears about the monthly jobs report — partly because changing or suspending it would likely require more than a commissioner’s say-so, and partly because yanking a century-old indicator could dent confidence rather than restore it. 

Some of Antoni’s jabs of the BLS haven’t been invented out of thin air. Response rates have slid; revisions have occasionally been larger since 2020; and economists have explored ways to bolster the payroll survey with private-sector data and refine seasonal adjustments. But the BLS already addresses these concerns by benchmarking its monthly estimates against the quarterly unemployment-insurance records census and explaining — in plain English — how and why the numbers change.

A confirmation on the clock

For now, Antoni’s future will be decided in committee rooms, not comment sections. His nomination sits before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, chaired by Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. In a statement, his office said: “We need a BLS Commissioner committed to producing accurate, unbiased economic information to the American people. Chairman Cassidy looks forward to meeting with Dr. Antoni to discuss how he will accomplish this.”

Democrats are already signaling firm resistance. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington has called Antoni an “unqualified right-wing extremist” and is demanding a full airing of his policy record and public comments. She posted on X that “any Senator who votes to confirm this partisan hack is voting to shred the integrity of our nation’s best economic and jobs data, which underpin our entire economy. If Antoni gets confirmed, I hope Republicans like playing make-believe, because that’s all BLS data will become.” Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich accused Antoni in a Substack post of “already monkeying with the data” and urged the Senate: “Don’t confirm Antoni,” arguing that job revisions are a normal feature of statistical refinement and that suspending the monthly report would undermine real-time economic clarity. Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote on X that “Senators who vote to confirm Antoni are voting to essentially eviscerate the BLS and its jobs data.”

BLS veterans say its design leaves little room for political interference. After the president’s unsubstantiated claims of “rigged” numbers, Kathy Utgoff, who served as BLS commissioner under President George W. Bush, told FactCheck.org that commissioners “can’t rig the numbers.” William Beach, who served as BLS commissioner under both Trump and Biden, echoed that sentiment. “The commissioner does not affect the numbers,’’ Beach recently told the Associated Press. “They don’t collect the data. They don’t massage the data. They don’t organize it.” He added that the odds of “rigging” the numbers are “pretty close to zero.”

But the debate over the politicization of official numbers is spilling beyond the HELP committee. Democrat Rep. George Whitesides warned on X that “putting highly partisan economist EJ Antoni in charge of the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics is sure to lead to less confidence in US economic numbers, less confidence in the US dollar, and less confidence in the US treasury market. Bad for the USA.” He said that his new bill — the Statistical Agency Integrity and Independence Act — would “prevent this type of political action in the future.”

Erica Groshen, who was appointed as the BLS chief by President Barack Obama, has, in recent comments, laid out what she sees as the essential qualifications for restoring trust: deep experience in economic statistics, strong leadership and managerial skills, an inside understanding of BLS processes, and the ability to navigate both Capitol Hill and the Labor Department. She believes a nominee who embodies those attributes would be well-positioned to win broad, bipartisan Senate support.

Hearings in the HELP committee could be scheduled in the weeks ahead, and if the trajectory holds, a floor vote could occur as early as mid‑October. Critics are sharpening their questions, and Antoni’s supporters are lining up. Markets will be watching, too. When all is said and done, the Senate’s thumbs-up — or down — will determine whether the BLS remains the gold standard or becomes a cautionary tale.