Life in America — whether there are enough jobs to go around, how much those jobs pay, and the cost of things like food and rent — is reflected in numbers that drive public and private decision-making. Lately, that data has been called into question as staffing shortages, years of shrinking funding, decades of declining survey responses and unforeseen interruptions have thwarted the agency responsible for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating much of the information.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a division of the US Labor Department, said in early June that it was scaling back or had already suspended data collection in some regions of the country, including Lincoln, Nebraska; Provo, Utah; and Buffalo, New York. “BLS makes reductions when current resources can no longer support the collection effort,” the office’s notice said.

A few economists identified anomalies in the April monthly data, which was published in mid-May. According to The Wall Street Journal, those who inquired about it received an excerpt from an internal BLS report stating, “The CPI temporarily reduced the number of outlets and quotes it attempted to collect due to staffing shortage in certain CPI cities,” starting in April.

There is other evidence of strain in the pattern of data releases for Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), a dataset that captures 95% of US wage-and-salary jobs, based on millions of administrative records submitted by all employers covered by the unemployment insurance system. Compare data releases for the third and fourth quarters of last year. For the third quarter, a news release was issued in February, followed by a full data release in March. For the fourth quarter, the news release and the full data update were published on the same date, June 4, making data users wait longer for information.

Chronically Underfunded

BLS data becomes more valuable at economic turning points and is more critical now than ever — with the Federal Reserve keenly watching data inputs on inflation to set interest rates. A series of events starting in January exacerbated issues at the chronically underfunded agency, former officials and economists said in interviews with The Daily Upside.

“It’s not that the numbers are being cooked, but BLS is being cooked. These statistical agencies are being destroyed, unwittingly,” says a former BLS economist who worked with the agency for over three decades and asked to remain anonymous given the sensitivity of the subject. “You want an economic dashboard? Well, somebody has just accidentally hit them all with a hammer.” The person added that the agency had new vacancies at a rate of 15% to 17%.

Difficulties were mounting long before that, however. While the BLS’s budget has increased nominally since 2009, in real terms, budgets have steadily declined by 18% through fiscal 2024 after adjusting for inflation, according to a January report published in collaboration between the American Statistical Association and George Mason University. And if Congress approves President Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget, BLS’s budget would drop by $56 million.

The agency has been able to operate on a shoestring budget, compensating for shortages with planning and workarounds that were later upended. For example, in 2022, the BLS headquarters was relocated from the Postal Square Building in Washington, D.C., to the Suitland Federal Center in Maryland, a space that is 40% smaller. The move, which was completed just last year, was made in part to avoid higher rent.

“During the pandemic, [the agency] let people work from home, and so they incorporated that into the plan to move into this other building with the [Bureau of Economic Analysis]. It was working fine, but then the return-to-office order just blew it up,” said Philippa Dunne of TLRAnalytics, an independent macroeconomic research firm.

Former BLS employees said that the agency has been hemorrhaging staff due to deferred resignations, early retirement programs, and quitting. Traditionally, when a key staff member leaves, a ready replacement steps up. In many cases, since January, replacement employees have followed key persons out the door shortly afterward. Also, contractual employees, who conduct some of the BLS’s data collection, have been cut. And replacing employees is, for now, prohibited under a hiring freeze imposed in January and extended through mid-July.

The bureau declined a request to interview Commissioner Erika McEntarfer and didn’t answer e-mailed questions about scaled-back data collection and the loss of BLS employees.

Modernizing US Data Infrastructure

Erica Groshen, who served as BLS Commissioner from 2013 to 2017, said the impact on the statistical agency so far has been “collateral damage” rather than an attack. There’s opportunity in the chaos, she added, because it “could be harnessed to modernize the statistical system.”

The US government’s data-collection system, scattered across 13 federal statistical agencies and more than 100 other offices, with a chief statistician sitting alone with a team of seven or eight employees at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and not in charge of any one agency, is more diffuse than is the case with most developed countries’ data infrastructure.

The declining rate in responses to surveys, household or otherwise, also puts federal statistics at risk of degradation. According to Groshen, response rates to surveys began to decline around the 1970s for several reasons: survey fatigue, gatekeepers to access due to caller ID and voicemail, and increased sensitivity to privacy issues.

“When you’re talking about government surveys, there is a documented decline in the feeling of civic responsibility. That reflects distrust of government, being less convinced by the argument that you are contributing to an important public good,” she said.

Revamping the way the US statistical system is organized may help address some of these issues. Statistical agencies could be unified as a single, independent scientific agency with shared software and hardware, Groshen said. Data could also be shared across agencies and blended to produce new economic signals. A more centralized federal statistical infrastructure would address the ongoing problem of declining survey response rates and cut through existing red tape around one federal agency sharing data with another.

Still, the hurdles to data modernization are many: inertia, territoriality because people like the roles they have, fear that it won’t be done correctly, and a lack of champions, Groshen said.

Statistics agencies need a champion. “To get something done on the Hill, you have to have one or more senators and representatives who think this is really important, and the statistical system has not had those kinds of champions,” Groshen said. “When was the last time you heard a senator or representative saying, ‘Elect me, I will make sure that you get the statistics you need to make your most important decisions?’”