Heritage Foundation economist E. J. Antoni, who President Donald Trump picked Monday to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, recently floated the idea of the BLS suspending its traditional monthly jobs reports.
Antoni, in an interview last week with Fox News Digital, questioned the accuracy of those monthly reports, which are key economic indicators that Wall Street investors and economists rely upon to assess the health of the U.S. labor market.
“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?” Antoni said in that interview, which occurred days before Trump said he would nominate him
“It’s a serious problem that needs to be fixed immediately,” said Antoni at the time.
“Until it is corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data.”
