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(Bloomberg Opinion) – How long can we trust government figures?
Following the lack of staff in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it was reportedly affected the agency’s ability to collect data for the Consumer Price Index last month, some handful of Democratic Senators wrote to the Labor Department that there is a demand to know how it affected the data of the agency. Earlier this year, the government took radical steps to dissolve several external expert advisory committees, who served BLS and Economic Analysis Bureau. Meanwhile, in diverse industries in the form of medical, insurance and education, professionals are dealing with disappearance of data from government websites.
But to answer this question: We can rely on the least data, until the “demonstration in the civil service, accountability and accountability improves” regulation, as long as the Personnel Management Office proposed by the Office of Personnel Management in April becomes effective. After that, all the bets are closed.
The interval in CPI data and the disintegration of the advisory committees depicted two dangers faced by government data: insufficient money and political intervention.
East is cooking for a while. BLS budget is actually 20% lower since 2010, and President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget proposes to cut an additional 8%. Surveks are not free to run or maintain, and they are not sure to improve. The Census Bureau has long wants to modernize the current population survey – which produces one of all the most paramount figures of unemployment rate. It recently prepared a three -year plan to make the survey more accurate and cost. For nothing, those advisory agencies and other external experts had played alarms for more money and modernization in public data collection and publication.
However, the threat of political intervention is new. The President began during the final decline during the campaign, when monthly employment reports showed a strong labor market. Trump and his surrogates immediately accused the agency of producing “fake numbers”. He cools down after winning – but if there is any kind of twist in the numbers, false allegations will definitely arise almost.
At one level, it is only empty if disastrous rhetoric that reduces confidence, but does not affect the production of numbers. Unfortunately, the administration’s action will not stop at rhetoric.
In October 2020, Trump issued an executive order 13957 to set up “Schedule F” in Civil Services. Its purpose was to reorganize federal employees in some positions and make them under the work of agency lead and under firing discretion. In other words: Target ability-based recruitment was to be reduced and it was to be changed with keeping it on political work.
President Joe Biden canceled the order in January 2021, but Trump restored in January 2025. Under this new rule, the federal employees whose jobs are revived lose their civil service safety, including a termination appeal that they believe that was based on political reasons rather than the performance.
The order was officially published in the federal register in April, and public comments – some of them were received by 40,000 – May. The administration has to take the comments on the ship and issue the final rule, which will later be effective after 30 or 60 days. If and when this happens, more information about how it will work will be announced. But in practice, the President will have the ability to set fire to any federal employee who he chooses.
It is not difficult to see how all this can cause problems for government agencies like BLS.
In 2019, former BLS Commissioner Erica Groshen was asked about the possibility of manipulating government data. He explained that it would be impossible for a political appointment to do so – because the employees will stop it. “If I tried to do this while being a commissioner, I definitely know that the first people to be beaten were BLS employees,” he said.
So to bring back all this in the beginning: Government data is reliable due to civil servants, but they are in administration sites. Once the new rule reinforces federal employees, the production and maintenance employees are at risk. And once they are, there is also data.
Of course, it will be difficult to manipulate a report like current population survey, with the depth of its expansion and the fact that all raw data are released to the public themselves. It is more likely that the government will stop publishing data only in the same level of detail – so if there are some changes in the headline numbers, it will be difficult to verify the reasons. It seems that public data has already been drawn, whether it is about the climate or social security administration waiting-time performance.
Equality and transparency are in the heart of public data. It is no surprise that they will attack by a administration that neither gives importance.
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This column reflects the individual views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Catherine Anne Edwards is a labor economist and independent policy advisor.
Such more such stories are available on bloomberg.com/opinion
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