Labor Dynamics Institute

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.

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

“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.

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.