Labor Dynamics Institute

“Nobody gets elected by saying they’re going to make federal statistics as good as they should be,” said Erica Groshen, ILR senior labor market advisor, about past and proposed budget cuts to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“The trustworthiness of the information would be lost,” said Erica Groshen, ILR senior labor market advisor, about a possible consequence of removing employment protections from government workers in policy-influencing positions, such as economists and statisticians at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Erica Groshen, former Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner and now senior economics advisor at the ILR School, says Trump’s latest cuts compound years of reductions and political pressure that have hampered the agency. Since 2009, the agency’s budget has dropped about 20% in real terms, she notes.

Cuts at the Bureau of Labor Statistics have reduced resources available for keeping response rates up and caused the agency to reduce the “granularity” of some of its programs, said Erica Groshen, former Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner and now senior economics advisor at the ILR School.

“The ability to find anomalies that need to be followed up on may not be quite as good,” said Erica Groshen, ILR senior labor market advisor, about fewer staff being available to follow up on non-respondents to surveys from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Erica Groshen, senior labor market advisor at ILR, provides analysis on why the Bureau of Labor Statistics may be issuing multiple revisions of its data.

Erica Groshen, ILR senior labor market advisor, commented on the Consumer Price Index following layoffs at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, saying “at a national level, the standard errors aren’t really affected very much, and the reliability is still good, but it’s really disaggregated at the granular level.”

Erica Groshen says the drop in staff and potential for cuts in funding could also threaten lesser-known economic measures, such as an index that tracks import prices, as well as a report that measures job openings.

This piece references a recent op-ed in Science by ILR’s Erica Groshen.

In this editorial, Erica Groshen writes that a bold effort is needed to modernize and coordinate the U.S. federal statistical system.

“Automation is something we’ve seen for a long time,” said Philipp Kircher. “Whether it’s the companies that currently support the U.S. president or not, somebody would be doing this innovation, maybe slightly slower.”

The biggest drivers of the proposed cuts are declining response rates and chronic underfunding of the agency, said ILR’s Erica Groshen

Erica Groshen, ILR senior labor market advisor, discusses changes to the civil service, saying that it has become “make it much easier for the administration to interfere with the activities of the statistical agencies.”

“There are a number of changes to the civil service that make it much easier for the administration to try to interfere with the activities of the statistical agencies and that worries me,” says Erica Groshen, senior labor market advisor at ILR.

Erica Groshen joins EconoFact Chats to discuss the history and the role of the BLS, the importance of good data for decision-making by government, businesses, and families, and her concerns about political interference degrading the integrity of government statistics.

Erica Groshen, senior labor market advisor at ILR, discusses the reliability of data supplied by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Erica Groshen, ILR senior labor market advisor, discusses disruption in federal statistics, modernizing federal statistics, and preserving data integrity on this podcast.

In this interview, Erica Groshen, ILR senior labor market advisor, comments on the importance of statistical agencies providing reliable data.

“There are economic impacts to [laid-off workers], their families, to the businesses they would have bought goods and services from,” said Erica Groshen, ILR senior labor market advisor, when interviewed about the possible impact of job cuts to the federal workforce.

Erica Groshen, ILR senior labor market advisor, comments on the likely effect of proposed tariffs on the U.S. economy.

Erica Groshen, ILR senior labor market advisor, says that economic uncertainty makes businesses “more cautious in their hiring and investment.”

Erica Groshen, ILR senior labor market advisor, describes how U.S. Census data is “vital” to decision-making in government and business.

“Revisions are not a bug, they’re a feature,” said Erica Groshen, ILR senior labor market advisor, about statistical refinements to U.S. employment numbers.

Erica Groshen, ILR senior labor market advisor, explains that data is like infrastructure, saying ““These data keep our economy running as much as roads and bridges do.”

Lars Vilhuber, senior research associate at the ILR Labor Dynamics Institute, says that the use of synthetic data allows researchers to get details about people at really small geographic levels, such as neighborhood blocks, because the data protects privacy.