Trump taps EJ Antoni to head BLS, sparking concerns over partisanship and expertise
President Trump has nominated EJ Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, following Trump's dismissal of the previous commissioner over job report revisions.
The pick has drawn sharp criticism, much of it centred on Antoni’s reputation as a hyper-partisan figure.
While some of that pushback comes from across the political aisle, not all of it does. A more substantive concern is that Antoni is an economist rather than a statistician, raising questions over whether he has the technical background to run an agency whose work hinges on statistical rigour.
For markets, the key worry is the potential impact on the perceived reliability and integrity of the BLS’s data — including closely watched employment and inflation figures.
