By Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON, Aug 7 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Friday approved career economist Brett Matsumoto as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, potentially easing trust concerns after President Donald Trump fired the previous head a year ago over weak employment numbers.
Matsumoto was confirmed by 51-47 in an “en-bloc” confirmation vote alongside dozens of other nominees to sub-cabinet level positions. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An inflation expert, Matsumoto joined the BLS in 2015, and was on leave to work at the White House Council of Economic Advisers when Trump tapped him to replace Erika McEntarfer, whom he dismissed last August.
Trump accused McEntarfer, without evidence, of manipulating July 2025’s employment report, which showed unexpectedly slow employment growth and massive downward revisions to the nonfarm payrolls counts for the prior two months.
Trump initially picked conservative economist E.J. Antoni, a critic of the BLS, to head the agency but withdrew the nomination amid opposition from some Republicans. Private economists had expressed worries over the trustworthiness of BLS-produced data following the firing of McEntarfer.
Her dismissal followed the disbanding by the Trump administration of BLS and Commerce Department advisory boards that had given the agencies advice on economic data collection and analysis. William Wiatrowski, a longtime deputy commissioner, has been leading the BLS in an acting capacity.
There has been no evidence of data manipulation, with the BLS even reporting job losses in some months in 2025 and this year, and most recently a jump in inflation related to the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Indeed, an employment report for July released on Friday just hours before Matsumoto’s confirmation included big downward revisions to previously reported job gains for May and June – the largest revisions since those that cost his predecessor her job.
Matsumoto told lawmakers at his confirmation hearing in June he was committed to maintaining the integrity and independence of the BLS.
“I believe strongly in the mission of the BLS to produce objective quality measures,” Matsumoto said. “It is important for the public to be confident that decisions at the BLS are being driven by science rather than politics.”
Matsumoto also pointed out that he would be the only political appointee at the BLS.
“Any changes to data or methods will be approved by career staff at the agency and communicated to the public ahead of time, along with research supporting the change,” he said.
NO HISTORY OF POLITICAL PUBLICATIONS
Matsumoto’s nomination was welcomed by private economists and a former BLS commissioner.
“Trust is mission critical for a statistical agency,” said Erica Groshen, who served as BLS commissioner from 2013 to 2017. “Brett Matsumoto comes from inside the BLS, is steeped in the culture of the agency, and doesn’t have a history of publications that are political. He is the kind of commissioner we’ve had in the past, and that makes me much less worried than I was about the first nominee.”
But many challenges await Matsumoto. The BLS, which has suffered from years of inadequate funding under both Democratic and Republican administrations, lost many experienced economists, researchers and statisticians during last year’s mass layoffs and resignations of federal workers.
More than a third of senior-level positions at the agency were estimated to be vacant at the beginning of 2026.
Though the BLS is currently filling some of the positions, it is unclear how many vacancies will be filled and the institutional knowledge has been lost for good. Most of the advertised jobs have been entry-level positions.
Resource constraints forced the BLS last year to reduce the Consumer Price Index collection sample across the country and end the calculation and publication of about 350 indexes in the producer price report. A 43-day government shutdown last year prevented the collection of data and publishing of the unemployment rate for October and other metrics from the household survey for the first time in the agency’s history.
Monthly inflation rates for October and November, as well as import price data, also could not be published. The BLS in May held open forums with private economists, researchers and statisticians to discuss options to address the data gaps.
While Matsumoto’s appointment will go a long way to assuage trust concerns, threats remain.
The Trump administration is pushing to strip tens of thousands of government employees of job protections, which unions have argued would make them easier to fire and replace with political loyalists. An estimated 50,000 federal employees, mostly career employees who work on policy matters, will be reclassified under the new “Schedule Policy/Career.”
“The statistical agency people produce numbers that affect policy, but the people who produce those numbers do not have a policy-influencing job,” said Groshen. “That distinction, I’m not sure is going to be recognized, and I fear that Schedule Policy/Career will be applied within the statistical agencies. That, I think, would undermine trust.”
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
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