E.J. Antoni Is the Right Man for BLS

 The Bureau of Labor Statistics has struggled in recent years. To understand the nation’s employment situation, the BLS regularly surveys people across industries and the workforce. Many have stopped responding. Seasonal adjustment and sampling techniques are in disarray, further hindering the bureau’s work. Lawmakers of both political parties have called for reform. E.J. Antoni, President Trump’s nominee for BLS commissioner, is the right man for the job.

Mr. Antoni has a doctorate in economics and is experienced in the policy world. I have known him for years and once tried to hire him. He is a serious research economist who has been writing and talking about how to raise the BLS’s standards.

The frequency and magnitude of data revisions at the BLS have strained the agency’s credibility. This month the agency lowered its employment estimates for May and June by a combined 258,000 jobs. Last year the BLS revised down its annual benchmark payroll growth by 818,000 jobs. These aren’t one-off mistakes but part of a pattern that puts our markets, research and economic policy at risk. Month after month, we have seen job revisions of 50,000 or 100,000 and higher.

In 2024 Mr. Antoni told the Daily Caller: “Revisions are a normal part of the reporting process, but large changes, or adjustments that consistently move in the same direction, are not normal. . . . Instead, they’re indicative of something problematic with the BLS’ methodology. That can happen when market conditions change drastically enough to be outside of the assumptions used in their models.”

Mr. Antoni is chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, which has been at the forefront of developing statistical reform on Capitol Hill, beginning in the 1990s with the founding of the Center for Data Analysis. William Beach, the longtime director of the Center for Data Analysis, was BLS commissioner during Mr. Trump’s first term. Mr. Beach initiated reforms at the agency that got off track under his Biden-appointed successor.

Last month, before Mr. Antoni’s nomination, a bipartisan group of academic economists sent a letter to lawmakers in Washington urging reform at the government’s statistics agencies. “We call on the Executive Branch to explicitly embrace the agencies’ long-awaited modernization plans and grant them flexibility in spending the money appropriated to them,” the letter read. With signatories from the University of Michigan, Harvard, UCLA and MIT, among others, the letter warned that “chronic and acute challenges have combined to bring agencies to the brink of crisis. They will need both financial resources and committed political leadership to ensure this moment of disruption lays the groundwork for a stronger future.”

Committed political leadership has acted to put in place long-awaited modernization. Mr. Trump did so by nominating Mr. Antoni to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Arthur Laffer is chairman of Laffer Associates.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/e-j-antoni-is-the-right-man-for-bls-politics-policy-a8851da1