BLS Data Changes Would Ripple to Labor Enforcement, Rules (1)

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics has already proposed data collection changes that would shift how the government enforces workplace laws, former Labor Department officials say.

The BLS collects data on a wide range of economic indicators used by the DOL to inform inspection plans, estimate how its regulations will affect employers and workers, and update its civil penalty amounts for inflation.

“It impacts your planning purposes,” said Andrew Stettner, a former unemployment insurance modernization official at the DOL who served in the Biden administration. “Some of the BLS data is used for wage and hour enforcement planning, job training allocations.”

The DOL oversees 11 million workplaces and enforces more than 100 federal laws that ensure workers are paid a minimum wage and receive overtime, jobs are safe, and employees receive their retirement and health-care benefits.

EJ Antoni, Trump’s nominee to serve as BLS commissioner, suggested this week the agency’s monthly jobs reports are flawed and should be released only on a quarterly basis until he changes how the government collects data. Trump fired his predecessor Erika McEntarfer after large corrections to the monthly jobs report, which the president said “eroded” the public’s trust.

“The fact that you consistently have large downward revisions means that there are other things wrong with your models and methodologies,” Antoni told Fox News Digital in an interview prior to his appointment. “Statistical assumptions that may have worked fine before Covid no longer work in today’s economy and therefore need to be revised.”

Trump has also directly called on Antoni, currently the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, to “ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE.” A White House spokesperson this week clarified that she expects the BLS jobs report will continue to be published monthly.

Advocacy groups like the Economic Policy Institute say Trump’s messaging makes clear “that he expects the BLS commissioner to only release data that shows the economy is booming—even if it means the data must be manipulated or changed by political appointees.”

Any alterations to the agency’s methodologies are supposed to go through a lengthy public notice and comment process, and would take time to implement. But Antoni could, for example, target monthly job surveys toward business sectors that are performing well, or exclude immigrants from its data.

“It’s something where they could put their finger on the scale and make the numbers seem to go one way or the other, without necessarily lying or cheating,” said Sean Higgins, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Enforcement Emphasis

The DOL’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration incorporates BLS data when establishing what industries need the most enforcement attention because they’re seeing higher rates of worker injury.

For instance, OSHA has recognized that falls remain the leading cause of fatalities and serious injuries in all industries by incorporating data collected by BLS. As a result, it issued a directive to increase enforcement and outreach for its regional offices and state plans.

Reworking BLS data for political gain would destroy faith as a whole across industries, according to Debbie Berkowitz, who served as an OSHA senior adviser during the Obama administration.

“People feel like it’s objective—that this data wasn’t tinged to please a certain political figure,” said Berkowitz. “Whether you’re Republican or Democrat, this is the data, and maybe it’s underreported, but it’s still the data. It wasn’t massaged so the president could say this industry is safe and this is not.”

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health also uses BLS data as part of their missions to assist both OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration with critical research, training, and resource development for responding to on-the-job injuries and hazards.

“Without accurate data and without the staff to do this data, workers in the most dangerous workplaces are much less likely to see a government inspector or have requirements for their employer to protect their safety,” Berkowitz added.

BLS data enables NIOSH to determine what research would be most impactful to various industries, according to Paro Sen, a member of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3840 in Cincinnati. Paro is on administrative leave as a NIOSH industrial hygiene researcher pending litigation over the Trump administration’s workforce cuts.

Sen is the principal investigator of a study researching nail technicians’ exposure to hazards and assisted with studies for emergency service workers.

“It was essential to know how many people were working in the field, what they were being paid, demographics,” said Sen. “Without that information it’s hard to be fully informed about the worker population you’re trying to reach.”

Regulatory Process

Federal agencies are required to undergo a cost-benefit analysis for any regulation expected to have an annual economic effect of more than $100 million.

The DOL typically estimates the cost of implementing a new policy change, how many employers and workers will be impacted, as well as the demographics of those impacted, among other factors based on the BLS data.

For example, the DOL uses data from the Current Population Survey to size up how many independent contractors could be impacted by its worker classification rule. The Biden administration also used BLS earnings data to annually update its rules on overtime eligibility, although that regulation was struck down in court.

Using flimsy data could expose federal agencies to lawsuits.

When the DOL used a Survey Monkey to justify a proposal to rescind child labor restrictions in health care during the first Trump administration, worker advocacy groups warned that move likely violated laws requiring agencies to use quality, peer reviewed data.

Stettner, now with the Century Foundation, also said that he’s concerned the administration could use the data accuracy argument to leave groups like non-citizens out of its impact analyses.

“You’re really changing the terms of the way in which we are approaching rulemaking, that only certain people are going to matter in this calculation,” he said.