How the decline of economic data could end up with a lot of unemployed Americans

One of the most underrated revolutions of the past 50 years is the explosion of easily accessible data. Whether it's detailed breakdowns of the characteristics of every neighborhood in the US, improved weather forecasting models that give us extra days to prepare for hurricanes, or personalized genomic analyses that can give us early warnings about disease, there has never been more information more readily available than in the last few decades.

For businesses and consumers alike, this data surge has been a massive boon to the collective bottom line. A deeper understanding of our world has led to more stable markets and saved lives through disaster planning or improved medicine. But the last year has shown that this data revolution is at risk, especially for the government-produced statistics that have become the backbone for myriad industries and private providers. As this core of information erodes, there is a real risk that we may be sliding into a less measured era.

A future without data is a future in which major actors in our economic system are flying blind. Decision-makers from the Federal Reserve and major Wall Street banks to small businesses and average American households may have to replace good information with vibes and guesses, opening the door to catastrophic mistakes.

A data downgrade

Perhaps the best way to understand the threat that data degredation poses is to focus on the global gold standard for information collection: the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While other federal agencies like the Census Bureau also do valuable work, the BLS has, for over a century, been one of the most granular sources of data on the US jobs market, prices, and much more. And the data has only gotten better over the decades: If you want to know how the price of groceries in Boston has changed over the last decade, how many florists are employed across the country, or how many hours Americans spend hanging out with their friends, the BLS is your destination.

Over the past few years, however, the BLS has faced tough times. A stagnant budget, a decline in the number of regular Americans and businesses responding to crucial surveys, and a need to modernize data-gathering techniques all complicated the process of compiling economic statistics. The increasing strain on the agency led the American Statistical Association to conclude in a December 2025 report that "the nation risks losing the statistical data infrastructure that enables sound policy, economic growth, and efficient and smooth governance."

For people who rely on the BLS, the past year has raised acute concerns. The first was President Donald Trump's firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer in July. Revisions to that month's jobs report showed that the US had created far fewer jobs than initially reported in the previous two months. Revisions are a standard part of the BLS data collection process, and the size of the adjustments was well within historical norms. Economists warned that the firing could be a harbinger of political meddling in the crucial job and price figures. Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Petersen Institute for International Economics, called the firing a "five-alarm intentional harm to the integrity of US economic data and the entire statistical system." Skanda Amarnath, Executive Director of Employ America, a think tank, said, "public trust is permanently harmed when the BLS commissioner is fired after one bad jobs report."

A few months after McEntarfer's firing, the BLS was rocked by another unprecedented event. The 43-day government shutdown that spanned October and November was not only the longest closure in federal history, it also led to another unprecedented event: Crucial surveys on employment and inflation were not conducted for the first time in nearly 80 years. The modern unemployment rate, which dates back to 1948, had its first gap in its storied history. The consumer price index, one of our main measures of inflation, went unpublished for the first time since its modern form was devised in 1947.

The private sector stepped in to try to partially fill in the gaps, with releases like ADP's Employment Report offering some visibility, but the dry spell only underlined the inadequacy of these sources. Many of these providers simply don't have the reach and resources that federal data gatherers have built over the years. This expertise and access allow federal agencies to "reflect the full population or economy," PIIE's Kolko wrote in an article released prior to the shutdown.

"In contrast, companies only see their users or customers," he said. "Credit card data miss the unbanked. Job sites do not capture those who have stopped looking for work. Cellphone data miss people without phones." And many private surveys, as Kolko added, rely on federal statistics as a benchmark, "making private data only as good as the public data they rely on."

On January 30, Trump announced that he would nominate Brett Matsumoto, a former BLS economist and member of the Council of Economic Advisors, to take over as BLS commissioner. The move was widely heralded by economists of all stripes, as the appointment of a dedicated data-driven expert at the troubled agency could be a sign that its woes are being taken seriously. That doesn't alleviate the fact that Matsumoto has a hard road ahead.

The ruptures of the past year only underscored the BLS's growing concerns. The Bureau's head count fell by 13% between 2024 and early 2026, according to the Office of Personnel Management, underscoring the agency's resource decline. Some programs have faced issues as well — last year, BLS announced it had to suspend data collection for the consumer price index in a handful of cities dotting the country from Buffalo, NY, to Provo, UT. While the Bureau tested the impact of that cut and found it wouldn't mess up inflation figures too much, losing the kinds of second- and third-tier cities where prices can differ significantly from those in the mega-metropolises is an ominous sign for getting the most precise information possible. After the cuts were announced, Russell Weaver, research director at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said in an interview that less accurate CPI data could "affect people's bottom line and ability to survive who are dependent on wage increases or Social Security benefit increases that are generally tied to cost-of-living changes."

The possibility of a less-informed future extends beyond the troubles at BLS. Other agencies are facing a data dilemma. Last June, the Commerce Department disbanded 14 advisory committees, including three at the Census Bureau. Those panels helped keep the Bureau's data-gathering techniques up to date and were key to planning the 2030 decennial census. Several government databases on climate change have been removed or suspended under the Trump administration, which could make it harder for farmers and real estate developers to access crucial information, such as changes in weather patterns or water reserve levels in Western states.

The American Statistical Association report included a list of dozens of data sets from BLS and other federal agencies that have been discontinued or curtailed in the last two years: cuts to some underlying tables that the Bureau of Economic Analysis uses in calculating GDP, the BLS has stopped tracking what businesses pay for more than 350 products that were once included in the Producer Price Index, changes to the Census Bureau's annual Survey of Income and Program Participation that tracks US households' economic well-being, and an end to the USDA's annual food insecurity survey, which tracks how many Americans are going hungry. Losing any one of these may not be the end of the world (except to some very particular researchers), but the drip of deleted datasets is increasing, and it risks cascading into a river of missing information, imperiling the more high-profile releases that draw headlines and help shape how America thinks about its economy.

Outside federal agencies, there have been other moves that suggest a paucity of data may be in our future. Trump floated changing Securities and Exchange Commission rules to require public companies to submit their financial information twice a year rather than quarterly. While that could make life a little easier for companies and could, in theory, promote longer-term thinking in C-suites, it also would leave investors with less timely information to decide how to allocate capital and disrupt the white-collar job market.

A decline in data could mess up the economy

The degradation of our data isn't just an egghead concern for economists and scientists. Businesses need this data to plan when and where to hire and expand. Consumers need it to make big purchase decisions and plan their careers. The government needs it to allocate resources.

The most powerful economic body in the world, the Federal Reserve, relies on BLS data to balance its two major goals: low unemployment and stable prices. The Fed's job is already tricky these days., Mmoving interest rates to perfectly calibrate the economy requires precision — leave rates too high for too long and the number of Americans without a job could spike, but lower them too fast and prices could shoot back up. The data gap during the government shutdown likely contributed to the Fed's increased uncertainty and division at its October meeting. Addressing the missing data, Chairman Jerome Powell described the situation using a meteorological analogy: "What do you do when driving through the fog? You slow down."

Even as the Fed walks more carefully, the reality of the economy doesn't slow down with them. A future with less reliable data could mean a less confident and less competent Fed. If a crisis like the 2008 housing market meltdown or the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic strikes, the central bank and Congress need to know exactly how it's affecting the economy as quickly as possible. If unemployment figures aren't reliable, the Fed and congressional responses could be too muted, leading to a longer and deeper recession, or too aggressive, spiking inflation and making everyone worse off.

If the Fed, with its massive staff of economists, struggled to make decisions without the regular flow of government statistics, then it stands to reason that businesses, which also have to deal with day-to-day operations, will struggle as well. A March 2025 survey of economic and business gurus by the Chicago Booth School of Business found that 90% of respondents agreed that the "ability of businesses to forecast and plan will be substantially impaired by lower quality economic data."

Speaking on a more personal level, as Business Insider's economic data editor, my job is to see what's going on in the economy and work with a talented team of reporters to help you, the reader, understand what it means for your life. The economic data from the BLS and other agencies is the first step in seeing those trends, and losing it would make it much harder to do that job. And it's not just my job; think of all the data you use to make decisions about your own career: Does the economy seem like it's in a good place to quit your job? What kind of wages could you expect from a career shift? Are there a lot of job openings in your field, or has hiring frozen?

This slow erosion of the information that informs our decisions also creates a vicious trust feedback loop. Americans are increasingly relying on "vibes" to understand the economy, creating a disconnect between how people think and feel about their economic prospects and the underlying reality. This break between lived experience and aggregate measures has eroded trust in the data itself. An August 2025 Economist/YouGov poll found that 45% of respondents completely or somewhat distrust federal economic data, compared with 42% who somewhat or completely trust it. Only 21% of people in the same survey said that the government's count of unemployment was accurate. If economic data becomes less reliable, it will continue to warp people's ideas of the economy and make decision-making harder.

It is fair to say that the amount of data being collected on our world can be overwhelming. There's more high-quality data than ever before, but there's also more garbage, poorly run surveys, and questionable analysis. It can be hard to make decisions amid that flood, but the answer to our struggles in understanding data is not to generate less data. That only allows bad-faith actors to seize on collective ignorance. The inability to understand the world would make it even harder for a well-run capitalist economy to function.

Andy Kiersz is an economic data editor at Business Insider.