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Monthly inflation rates for October and November, as well as import price data, also could not be published.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."
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