President Donald Trump’s monthslong and contentious search for a new commissioner to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics may be ending.
On a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump announced that he intends to nominate Brett Matsumoto, a longtime agency economist, to lead the BLS.
The BLS commissioner role has been vacant since August, when Trump fired Erika McEntarfer after the release of a jobs report showing weak employment growth. Trump alleged, without providing evidence, that the data had been politically manipulated. The allegation and removal have since undermined public trust in one of the federal government’s most closely watched statistical agencies, which is supposed to remain nonpartisan.
The agency has roughly 2,000 employees, and the commissioner is its only appointed position. The commissioner’s role carries a four-year term and requires Senate confirmation.
Before Matsumoto, the White House previously nominated EJ Antoni, a Heritage Foundation economist, for the job, but later withdrew the nomination after it became clear Antoni lacked sufficient support for Senate confirmation.
Who is Brett Matsumoto?
Matsumoto is a career economist with deep ties to the agency he would lead if confirmed.
Based on Matsumoto’s LinkedIn profile, he earned undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of Delaware before earning his doctorate in economics from the University of North Carolina in 2015. Since then, he has been working at the BLA as a supervisory research economist. Multiple academic papers under his name can be found covering issues such as consumer expenditure and inflation measurement. Over the past year, he has been on assignment at the Council of Economic Advisers.
Matsumoto is not very active on social media. A Facebook account under his name shows that his profile picture used to be a photo with Ivanka Trump back in August 2020. His most recent profile photo features him alongside a tabby cat.
In a post on Truth Social late Friday, Trump said he was confident Matsumoto had the expertise to “QUICKLY fix the long history of issues at the BLS on behalf of the American People.”
Several economists posted online that they believe Matsumoto could be the right choice.
Claudia Sahm, Chief Economist at New Century Advisors, posted on X that Matsumoto is an “excellent choice” for the commissioner position.
Skanda Amarnath, Executive Director of Employ America, echoed the sentiment on X and said that Matsumoto is “a very thoughtful person who understands the nuts and bolts of data measurement and estimation.”
