EJ Antoni, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has suggested suspending the agency’s monthly jobs reports and publishing only quarterly numbers until issues with data collection are corrected.

In an interview with Fox News Digital on Aug. 4, before Trump nominated him for the position, Antoni said businesses can’t plan and the Federal Reserve can’t conduct monetary policy when the monthly report is unreliable and frequently overstated and thus misleading.

“Until it is corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data,” he said, according to Fox Business. “Major decision-makers from Wall Street to DC rely on these numbers, and a lack of confidence in the data has far-reaching consequences.”

The jobs report is one of the so-called Principal Federal Economic Indicators, which Congress requires, by law, to be published according to a prescribed date on a calendar that statistical agencies submit to the White House a year in advance. William Beach, who was BLS chief during Trump’s first term, said that those reports can be held up if there was evidence of malfeasance or criminal undermining, but a commissioner can’t prevent its publication.

“The commissioner has very few powers to change the context of a report or suspend a report,” Beach said. “The president could probably hold it up under his executive powers, but there’s certainly nothing the commissioner could do.”

Beach did note, however, that the commissioner can authorize the suspension of some parts of reports under certain circumstances. For example, in the early months of the pandemic when many businesses were closed, Beach had BLS drop publication of wholesale price data on industrial diamonds.

White House reaction

When asked if the BLS will still publish the monthly jobs report, 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.”

When pressed about Antoni’s specific comments, Leavitt said, “I think he floated the idea of possibly suspending until they can get the data and the methodology in order, and this president wants to ensure that the BLS, again, is putting out accurate and honest data that the American people can trust.”

BLS is scheduled to release the August employment report on Sept. 5.

If confirmed by the Senate, Antoni would succeed Erika McEntarfer, whom Trump abruptly fired Aug. 1 after a BLS report showed weak job growth in July and substantial downward revisions to the prior two months. Trump accused her, without evidence, of manipulating the numbers for political purposes, while noting that she was appointed by former President Joe Biden.

Michael Horrigan, who spent over a decade at BLS overseeing its employment and inflation programs, said the implications of pausing the monthly jobs report would be “very concerning,” and impact Wall Street and public trust in the agency. It would also have a ripple effect on other series within the jobs report, like data on state and local employment and wages, he said.

“A much simpler solution to eliminate the impact of revisions is to delay the publication of a given month until the full sample has been delivered and eliminate the noise of revisions,” Horrigan said.

Elizabeth Renter, senior economist at NerdWallet, said the jobs data shouldn’t be suspended or delayed because of large revisions. Big revisions are common when the economy hits a turning point — which makes data publication at those times even more crucial, she said.

“With most economic data, there is a trade-off: Some comes less frequently and is more precise, whereas other data comes at a higher frequency but may be more inexact,” Renter said in a note. “And all of them — annual, quarterly, monthly and even weekly — are estimates. None are exact.”

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With assistance from Hadriana Lowenkron.

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