President Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics is suggesting that the agency suspend its monthly jobs report, an economic staple that is relied upon by the Federal Reserve and U.S. businesses to gauge the health of the economy.
In an interview on Fox News Digital on Monday ahead of his nomination, E.J. Antoni criticized the monthly employment report as flawed and suggested it be replaced with “more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data.”
Antoni, who is a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, was tapped by Mr. Trump on Monday to run the BLS after the president fired the former commissioner earlier this month, blaming her for a disappointing July jobs report. Mr. Trump took issue with large revisions made to the previous month’s jobs data, although jobs number revisions are commonly issued by the agency as more accurate data is collected over time.
“How on earth are businesses supposed to plan — or how is the Fed supposed to conduct monetary policy — when they don’t know how many jobs are being added or lost in our economy? It’s a serious problem that needs to be fixed immediately,” Antoni told Fox News Digital.
He added, “Until it is corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data.”
While some survey recipients immediately respond to the BLS’ surveys, others report data later, which leads to the monthly revisions. Despite this, the BLS issues its monthly jobs report in order to report employment information in a timely manner, even though it is subject to revisions — both up and down — in later reports.
Asked whether the BLS would continue to release monthly jobs reports, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “I believe that is the plan and that’s the hope, and that these monthly reports will be data that the American people can trust.”
Leavitt said “we need to restore new leadership that we trust” at the BLS, adding that “we need to look at the means and the methods of how the United States is acquiring this very important data.”
“The goal, of course, is to provide honest and good data for the American people to make very important economic decisions on,” she said.
Responding to the BLS’ employment surveys is voluntary for businesses, while the federal government’s Office of Management and Budget directs the BLS to release “robust” data on basic economic indicators in a “timely” manner. But that’s become more challenging as fewer people and institutions respond to surveys, experts say.
“Response rates have declined for nearly every top-tier government statistical survey over the last decade, a trend that accelerated during the pandemic,” Goldman Sachs economists wrote in an Aug. 11 research note.
