This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
Unemployment numbers and the consumer price index come out every month like clockwork, giving individuals, businesses and local and state government agencies across the nation critical information.
Economists and others fear wide-ranging ramifications for California if the reliability of that information is uncertain, calling the data fundamental for making an array of policy and funding decisions.
President Donald Trump recently fired Erika McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, because he didn’t like that the July jobs report showed a drastic slowdown in hiring, and the updated numbers for May and June, after the common process of a revision. He accused her, without evidence, of rigging the data.
Trump has nominated E.J. Antoni to head the agency. Antoni is the chief economist at the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank, a contributor to the right-wing policy blueprint Project 2025 and a critic of the agency. He said in an interview with Fox News Digital in early August that monthly jobs data is flawed and should be suspended, a notion the White House has already walked back.
If Antoni is confirmed, economists on both sides of the aisle worry about a possible politicization of jobs, inflation and other data from the agency. That data helps inform cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security, funding for SNAP benefits, tax-bracket thresholds, limits on retirement account contributions and more. Meanwhile, state agencies and others are concerned about possible changes that could affect their work and threaten the continuity of data that is important to many people’s lives, whether they know it or not.
The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, which has been asked to hold a confirmation hearing for Antoni, has not said it will do so. The office of committee chair Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, has not responded to a CalMatters email asking about a hearing. But one report says a hearing could be held in September.
“(That data) allows consumers, investors, people thinking about retirement and businesses to make reasonably informed decisions,” said Chris Hoene, executive director of the California Budget & Policy Center, a left-leaning research and advocacy group. “If you pull out federal data, we’re left with how people are feeling about things and the stock market, and that’s a big void.”
When asked about Antoni, a Heritage Foundation spokesperson referred CalMatters to the White House. The White House and the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not respond to questions about possible changes in issuing monthly jobs reports or the agency’s data practices.
How California uses the data
At state and local governments, information about jobs and inflation is important for policymakers, lawmakers and the work of California’s Employment Development Department, community colleges, workforce development boards and others.
“We need to know and have a common base of understanding of how California is faring in terms of jobs, prices, and other economic measures in order to make good policy,” said Sarah Bohn, director of the Public Policy Institute of California’s Economic Policy Center.
Like other states, the California EDD has a partnership with the Bureau of Labor Statistics for release of the monthly unemployment rate and job estimates.
Monthly jobs numbers are estimates and are revised as payroll data comes in. Additionally, an annual revision, called benchmarking, updates monthly numbers as more information becomes available from tax records.
“The process, which includes revisions and benchmarking after the estimates, has delivered consistent and reliable results for over 75 years,” said Anne Chapuis, spokesperson for the EDD, in an email.
The data also is crucial for the Finance Department’s economic and revenue forecasting, as well as for its work on the state budget, which includes calculating the minimum wage and cost of living.
“If the BLS data disappears tomorrow, we wouldn’t be able to say, ‘Let’s pick up and use this other source,’” said Somjita Mitra, chief economist for the finance department. She pointed to the payroll company ADP’s regular releases of jobs data, noting that it’s only for the private sector so it’s not comprehensive. And Mitra said there is no alternative at all for inflation data.
“It would be almost impossible” for her to do her job without the federal data, she said.
Community colleges also rely on jobs data from both the EDD and the federal government.
Laura Coleman is statewide director of the Center of Excellence for Labor Market Research, which is part of the community college system’s Workforce & Economic Development division and serves eight different regions in California. The regional centers use labor market information to help figure out supply and demand in different industries — some federal funding is tied to and state rules require that information. The centers work directly with colleges and even K-12 schools, she said.
“We’re trying to help with anticipating needs by understanding where jobs are going and what the trends are,” Coleman said. “We talk about a living wage and expectations of earnings when a student goes into a career pathway.”
Even state agencies that don’t use federal data directly use research that is underpinned by it. Daniel Lopez, spokesperson for the Division of Apprenticeship Standards, said the division pays close attention to employment and workforce trends. That includes receiving briefings and using insight from the EDD.
‘They would not get very far’
Experts say the infrastructure around the data collected and disseminated by the federal bureau is robust and has been around for a long time.
“It would be very hard for political appointees to manipulate or to meddle with official statistics,” said Jed Kolko, former Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs who oversaw the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis under President Joe Biden. “They would not get very far without help from career civil servants who are technical experts. They would blow the whistle.”
But Kolko added that despite what he calls “checks and balances” both internal and external, “it doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.”
The risks of manipulated economic data run the gamut. More broadly, the experts CalMatters spoke with say the loss of trust in U.S. employment and inflation numbers could affect investment in the nation.
“We can’t keep throwing uncertainty and instability at the U.S. economy on so many fronts and have it hold up,” said Hoene of the California Budget & Policy Center, referring to the president’s constant changes to tariffs and the pressure he has been putting on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. “If you then undermine the reliability of data coming from the world’s biggest economy, global actors have no reason to have confidence about whether their money is safe here,” Hoene said.