Erika McEntarfer

Erika L. McEntarfer is the Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For most of her career she had been an economic researcher at the U.S. Census Bureau.

McEntarfer was nominated for the BLS post in July, 2023, and confirmed to the position by the U.S. Senate in January, 2024. She started in the position on January 31, 2024.

Career
McEntarfer received a bachelor's degree in Social Science from Bard College and a Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Tech.

She took a position as a labor economist at the Census Bureau's Center for Economic Studies (CES). She was promoted to senior supervisory economist for the Labor Markets section of the CES. She focused on employment, promotion patterns, and earnings of U.S. workers, particularly using the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) data set which has matched data on employers and employees.

In periods away from the Census Bureau, McEntarfer had been on the economic staff of the Treasury Department's Office of Tax Policy in 2008-2010, and immediately before her appointment to the BLS had been on the nonpolitical staff of the White House Council of Economic Advisers for a year.