President Donald Trump’s choice to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) — the agency behind the nation’s jobs and inflation data — is drawing sharp criticism for being more partisan firebrand than neutral number-cruncher.
EJ Antoni, a former chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation and contributor to the Project 2025 agenda, was tapped for the role after Trump fired the agency’s previous head, Erika McEntarfer. Her ouster came right after a jobs report that showed hiring had slowed — numbers Trump baselessly claimed were “rigged.”
“Firing officials for reporting accurate data unflattering to the regime is straight out of the authoritarian playbook,” said Vanessa Williamson of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “It is an attempt to mislead the American people, to avoid being held to account for their failures, and to rewrite history.”
Critics warn Antoni’s appointment risks politicizing one of the few government agencies long regarded as independent and trustworthy.
Antoni, though, has been anything but shy about his views. He’s regularly appeared on podcasts and cable TV blasting official jobs data, calling it misleading. Just a week before his nomination, he told Fox News Digital the Labor Department should stop publishing monthly jobs reports altogether — a stunning suggestion given their huge influence on Wall Street.
Even his defenders are cautious. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called him an “economic expert” with congressional testimony under his belt, adding that Trump “trusts him to lead this important department.”
But economists point to a record filled with partisan spins and questionable math.
Among Antoni’s most controversial claims:
- Arguing the US had been in recession since 2022 (it hadn’t).
- Calling for the entire Federal Reserve board to be fired because it didn’t make a profit on its bond holdings.
- Posting charts on social media that conflated timelines to make inflation look like it was headed to 15 percent.
Alan Cole of the Tax Foundation called one of Antoni’s recession arguments “maybe the worst Antoni content I’ve seen yet.”
Antoni has also floated scrapping Social Security benefits for younger workers, saying in a 2024 podcast that “you’ll need a generation of people who pay Social Security taxes but never actually receive any of those benefits.” That stance could loom large, since as BLS chief he would oversee inflation data that directly determines Social Security payouts.
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