Trump Reportedly Picks Insider To Head Bureau Of Labor Statistics

• The choice elevates a career staffer to run the federal government’s leading agency for economic statistics.
• Matsumoto has worked as an economist at the BLS since 2015.
   

U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly plans to nominate economist Brett Matsumoto to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

The choice elevates a career staffer to run the federal government’s leading agency for economic statistics, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter on Friday.

The agency has been without a commissioner since Trump fired its previous chief in August out of frustration with numbers that showed bad news about the job market. 

About Matsumoto

Matsumoto has worked as an economist at the BLS since 2015. Before spending much of the past year on assignment with the White House Council of Economic Advisers, he had no experience working in a political capacity, as per the report. 

He earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina in 2015. 

Removal Of Previous BLS Head

President Donald Trump in August had directed his team to fire the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, Irked by a steep downward revision to the jobs data for May and June month. 

Trump criticized McEntarfer by pointing out a precedent in the jobs data numbers. “[The] Head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics did the same thing just before the Presidential Election, when she lifted the numbers for jobs to an all-time high,” he said.

“A SCAM! She did it again, with another massive ‘correction,’ and got FIRED! She had the biggest miscalculations in over 50 years,” the president had said. 

McEntarfer was selected to the post on a nonpartisan basis in January 2024 after being nominated by former President Joe Biden in 2023. 

The December jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed the unemployment rate inching lower to 4.4% in December, down from a revised 4.5% in November.

U.S. equities closed in red territory on Friday. At the time of writing, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which tracks the S&P 500 index, was down by 0.11% in extended hours of trading, the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (QQQ) fell 0.2%, while the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust (DIA) declined 0.09%. 

Retail sentiment around the S&P 500 ETF on Stocktwits was in the ‘extremely bearish’ territory.

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