Trump Names 'Utterly Unqualified' Project 2025 Economist as New Labor Stats Chief

Less than two weeks after firing the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, baselessly claiming that she had released manipulated jobs data, President Donald Trump on Monday appeared to have found a "solution" to the problem of weak economic numbers that have been plaguing his administration: a new nominee to lead the agency who, according to one conservative economist, is "as partisan as it gets."

The president announced on his Truth Social platform that he was nominating E.J. Antoni, the chief economist for the right-wing Heritage Foundation's Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, to lead the BLS, saying Antoni "will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE."

"Our economy is booming," he declared.

The announcement was made days after Trump demanded the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner who served under both him and former President Joe Biden. McEntarfer, Trump suggested, had released a false jobs report saying that only 73,000 jobs were added to the economy in July and that previous estimates had overstated the new job numbers by 258,000.

Economists say the discrepancy between the actual job numbers and the earlier projections was not unusual and likely explained by "seasonal adjustments and more complete survey responses," as Axios reported. There is no evidence that McEntarfer manipulated the data to harm Trump politically, as the president suggested, or that she did the same during the Biden administration "in the hopes" of getting Democratic nominee Kamala Harris elected president.

But experts wondered if Americans can trust that Antoni, should he be confirmed to lead the BLS, won't manipulate jobs data to support the appearance of what Trump calls a "booming" economy—one in which grocery prices have once again jumped, according to the consumer price index (CPI) numbers that the bureau released Tuesday. Tariffs imposed by the president have driven up the cost of imported goods.

"Antoni has repeatedly and unfairly attacked the agency he'd be set to run, contributed to the right-wing Project 2025 policy blueprint, and in his role at the Heritage Foundation has stretched the truth about the economy to make partisan political claims," said Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

Antoni, who earned his Ph.D. in economics in 2020, is listed as the fifth contributor to Project 2025, the right-wing policy agenda that calls for the gutting of the federal government. He has called for the U.S. Labor Department to be staffed by far more political appointees instead of career civil servants.

He said on former Trump aide Steve Bannon's podcast that the absence of a Trump appointee in the top position at the BLS is "part of the reason why we continue to have all of these different data problems," but Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law and Economics, highlighted on the social media platform X a number of instances of Antoni "completely not understanding economic statistics, being partisan hack, or both."

For example, in February Antoni used data showing the total population growth of native-born Americans to claim that foreign-born workers have benefited from "all net job growth"—but as economist Jeremy Horpedahl of the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics noted, using data on working-age, native-born Americans would have rendered a far more accurate analysis.

"The working-age, native-born population hasn't been growing for the past decade," said Horpedahl at the time. "If you use the working-age populations, you will see that native-born Americans have higher employment rates, which are also at record highs."

Having called the CPI an "Orwellian trick" used to mask high inflation, Antoni is unlikely to put much stock in the index numbers that were released Tuesday, which Yale University economist Ernie Tedeschi said straightforwardly show that "the prices of consumer goods are higher right now than they would be without tariffs."

Antoni has long been critical of the agency he's been nominated to lead, saying last week, "There are better ways to collect, process, and disseminate data—that is the task for the next BLS commissioner, and only consistent delivery of accurate data in a timely manner will rebuild the trust that has been lost over the last several years."

The nominee "has never worked in statistics collection," said Joseph Politano, who writes about monetary policy at Apricitas Economics. "He is five years out of his Ph.D. He's only ever written one economics paper. His explicit, only qualifications are that he works in ultraconservative think tanks and believes Trump's conspiracies about the BLS. Grim stuff."

The criticism of Antoni was bipartisan, with Stan Veuger, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, calling him "utterly unqualified and as partisan as it gets."

Bivens warned that Trump's selection of Antoni "makes it clear that he expects the BLS commissioner to only release data that shows the economy is booming—even if it means the data must be manipulated or changed by political appointees."

"This move is undemocratic—and economically dangerous," said Bivens. "The economy runs on reliable data... Trump's attempt to politicize BLS means that policymakers and the public wouldn't be able to trust the data. If this happens, confidence in U.S. data will collapse and reasonable economic decision-making will be impossible. This manufactured chaos will reduce business investment and consumer spending, making a recession—and soaring unemployment—far more likely in coming months. Between illegal firings of public servants, starving data agencies of needed resources, and now political intimidation, the U.S. looks set to run into the next economic downturn flying blind."

"The cost of this incompetence," he added, "will be felt by working people first."