Donald Trump’s press secretary refused to give a straightforward answer to a key question about the monthly jobs reports.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the government will continue to issue the monthly jobs report, which includes the nation’s unemployment rate, despite comments by an administration’s nominee that suggested suspending it.

Trump has selected E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to be the next commissioner at the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Antoni’s nomination was quickly met with a cascade of criticism from other economists, from across the political spectrum.

President Donald Trump said Monday that he has nominated E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to head the agency that compiles and publishes the nation's employment and inflation figures.

It raised new alarm about the future of an agency that tracks how the economy of the world's richest country is faring.