June 17 (Reuters) – A U.S. Senate committee will vote next week on whether to advance the nomination of Brett Matsumoto, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency that produces key economic data including monthly reports on the state of the job market and inflation.
The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has set a vote for June 24, according to an undated posting on its website.
Matsumoto appeared before the panel last week at a confirmation hearing during which he said he did not believe BLS data had been fabricated or rigged, countering Trump’s accusation that the previous BLS commissioner had issued fake job numbers.
Matsumoto, an economist who has worked at the BLS since 2015 but is on leave from the economic data agency to work at the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, also said he has faith in the work performed by the career staff who collect and process the data and would ensure that their output is what is published by the agency.
He also said he would work to address technical issues that have undercut the quality of BLS data in recent years but did not echo Trump’s unfounded assertions that agency output was being manipulated for political purposes.
Trump fired the agency’s previous commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, last August following the release of a monthly employment report that included historically large revisions to previously reported figures on job creation.
The president initially picked conservative economist E.J. Antoni to head the agency but later withdrew the nomination.
Should the committee, which like the Senate is majority Republican, approve Matsumoto’s nomination, it would then proceed to a vote before the full Senate.
(Reporting By Dan Burns; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama )
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