Odd Lots
Some of America's Most Important Economic Data Is Decaying
Apr 30, 2025
Bill Beach, former commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, shares his insights on the growing challenges in gathering economic data. He highlights the declining response rates to surveys, particularly along political lines, complicating the accuracy of economic indicators. Beach discusses the urgent need to modernize data collection methods and the implications of reduced funding on the quality of statistics. Join him for a fascinating exploration of how the state of data impacts our understanding of the economy.
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Quick takeaways
- The declining response rates for economic surveys, particularly in labor statistics, are undermining the reliability of critical economic data collection.
- Rising operational costs and the complexity of adjusting data for evolving products highlight the urgent need for modernization in economic data methodologies.
Deep dives
Understanding Economic Data Collection
The process of collecting economic data, particularly for labor statistics, is complex and often taken for granted. Surveys for the jobs report rely on voluntary participation from around 400,000 firms that must submit a detailed response capturing employment data for a specific period each month. The information collected is then adjusted using weights to represent the national picture accurately, where regional variations in data, such as differences in consumer price indices across cities, are taken into account. This level of granularity in data collection highlights the intricate methodologies behind the seemingly straightforward numbers we see, like unemployment rates or job growth statistics.
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