WASHINGTON (TNND) — The monthly jobs report is under a microscope as President Donald Trump’s nominee to take over the Bureau of Labor Statistics has debated whether to pull back on its release schedule to get more accurate data after the Aug. 1 publication brought above-average revisions showing the labor market was weaker than initially thought.
The BLS report, typically issued on the first Friday of every month, is one of the most closely watched releases by policymakers and Wall Street. Attention on the report has been even further ramped up since the August report showed a slowdown in the job market and downward revisions Trump claims are due to political bias, leading to the search for a new commissioner for the stat-keeping agency.
EJ Antoni, the chief economist of the Heritage Foundation that Trump has chosen to lead the BLS, floated backing off monthly releases to quarterly earlier this week in an interview that took place a week before his nomination with Fox News. He has reportedly backed off the suggestion and will continue with the monthly reports if confirmed, CNN reported on Tuesday.
Asked about Antoni’s comments at Tuesday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the plan was to continue releasing the jobs report on a monthly basis.
“I believe that is the plan and that’s the hope,” Leavitt said. “And that these monthly reports will be data that the American people can trust.”
Trump has claimed that the data is being manipulated intentionally for partisan gains. Antoni told Fox News he did not believe that was the case but that the survey’s low response rates are resulting in unreliable metrics that were hurting decision-making processes for the Fed and businesses.
“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? It’s a serious problem that needs to be fixed immediately,” Antoni said.
Debate over how to handle the monthly jobs data is the latest in the fallout of the July report that showed the labor market dragging to a halt and brought massive downward revisions of 258,000 jobs for May and June. After its release, Trump removed Erika McEntarfer from her position leading the BLS and nominated Antoni to replace her.
Ensuring the federal government continues to put out reliable and credible economic data has been a concern among some economists since Trump’s decision to oust McEntarfer.
“People rely on that data. While there’s room for improvement, the fact that it’s not biased is very important,” said Ryan Young, senior economist at the American Enterprise Institute. The White House has defended Antoni’s selection amid criticism about his background and said he would make the data more reliable. Stephen Moore, a former White House economic adviser and economist and the Heritage Foundation, told the National News Desk that Antoni won’t let politics interfere with the data releases.
“The most important statistic that we put out each month that gauges the health of the American economy is the jobs report. We need to make sure that jobs report is accurate,” Moore said. “He’s not going to try to fudge the numbers. What he’s trying to do is give us accurate numbers, which is good for the economy.”
BLS has been publishing monthly jobs reports since 1915, giving economists, investors and the Fed current information on job creation and unemployment rate. It regularly revises jobs numbers as new data is collected to provide a clearer picture about the state of the economy.
Initial versions of the jobs report rely on data from large businesses that respond quickly to the government surveys, while smaller businesses that are more affected by economic turbulence are slower to respond and result in the revisions. Later revisions are expected every month as the data is more thoroughly examined and refined.
There is some consensus among economists that the jobs data could be collected more efficiently and a post-pandemic trend of fewer responses from businesses could be improved.
Even with agreement that the surveys and data collection methods could be improved, the data is still important to investors, businesses and the Fed to make decisions based on current economic circumstances.
The Fed uses a wide range of data to make its interest rate decisions, but having timely insights into the labor market is important for it to achieve both ends of its dual mandate, maximum employment and stable prices. Without a monthly jobs report, it would be missing key information about the economy that could have ripple effects in financial markets and for businesses.
“(Monthly releases are) important for the public and the private sectors. The Federal Reserve needs the data so it can make interest rate decisions. It’s got that dual mandate, and one half of that dual mandate is to monitor unemployment. You can’t do that if you don’t have data,” Young said. “It’s OK if the data is not perfect, it’s OK if the data gets revised in cases like this, sometimes significantly, but it still needs to have that data.”