By Jasper Ward and Christian Martinez
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White House has sent paperwork to the Senate to withdraw the nomination of E.J. Antoni as head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing three sources.
President Donald Trump nominated Antoni last month to serve in the role after firing the agency’s head, Erika McEntarfe, and accusing her without evidence of manipulating the bureau’s figures.
The White House did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment from Reuters.
Antoni currently serves as chief economist at the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and has been a critic of the BLS, whose monthly job market and inflation report is used by a global audience of economists, investors, business leaders, public policymakers and consumers.
A possible government shutdown would delay the release of the September jobs numbers, which are due out on Friday.
Antoni’s nomination was met with concern by economists about the quality of BLS data.
“The nominee will result in a surge in demand for private label data,” Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM US, said in August.
Alex Jacquez, the head of policy and advocacy for Groundwork Collaborative, which describes itself as fighting “to change economic policy and narratives in order to build public power,” said at the time that Antoni’s selection was “a clear assault on independent analysis that will have far-reaching implications for the reliability of U.S. economic data.”
The BLS has come under heightened scrutiny for the eroding quality of the data it produces.
Trump added to growing concerns about the reliability of BLS and other federal government economic data when he fired McEntarfer on August 1. Her dismissal came hours after the agency reported much weaker-than-expected job growth for July and issued an historically large revision to its employment figures for May and June.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Don Durfee and Leslie Adler)
