After originally suggesting this unusual action during an interview released on Tuesday, EJ Antoni, chosen by President Donald Trump to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He has decided against the notion of suspending the monthly jobs report, a crucial and historically important barometer of economic activity in the United States.
Confirmed, Antoni will keep publishing the monthly employment data as Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday. Moore said he spoke with Antoni, who has since retracted his earlier recommendation. Earlier, Antoni had told Fox News Digital that the monthly employment report should be postponed in favor of quarterly figures since the report is sometimes erratic and prone to frequent revision.
In an interview Fox News Digital published on Tuesday but conducted on August 4, a week before his nomination, Antoni said the BLS should only publish quarterly data until it could ensure more accurate monthly job numbers. “I think it’s a bad idea to do that. In fact, I’ve talked to EJ about it, and he’s not going to do that. We need monthly numbers,” he told Fox.
Further continuing, “Now what he’s talking about is we do a quarterly number that’s much more accurate than the monthly one, and he’s saying maybe, but he’s backed off on that. We’re going to continue to do monthly numbers.” Moore, who backed Antoni for the post of BLS commissioner, revealed to CNN’s Danny Freeman on Tuesday that the nominee has changed his position.
Earlier on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt noted Antoni’s plan to temporarily halt the monthly jobs report, yet stressed that the Trump administration intended to continue disseminating data on jobs monthly. Amidst deeper IT sector slowdown, Leavitt, in a press briefing, mentioned, “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.”
