The ranks of US government statisticians have been decimated in the past year by layoffs and takeovers. This, combined with diminishing funding and attacks on their independence, has put them at risk Data used to make informed decisions On everything from the country’s economy to demographics, according to a new report by outside experts released Wednesday.
One agency lost 95% of its staff, while others fell by about a quarter to more than a third, due to cuts in the size of government this year during President Donald Trump’s first months in office, according to the report from the American Statistical Association. The annual report said that in addition to veteran employees with deep institutional knowledge, some of the cuts affected new employees who aim to inject new blood into the agencies.
“Things are getting worse,” Nancy Potok, the former chief U.S. statistician during the first Trump administration who was on the team that released the report, said on Wednesday. “He’s kind of falling off a cliff over there and in a really terrible situation.”
The administration’s Office of Management and Budget, which includes the chief U.S. statistician who coordinates the data collection system, did not respond Wednesday morning to an email inquiry about the report.
However, when asked last month about concerns about the politicization of statistical agencies, Mark Calabria, who in July was appointed chief statistician of the United States, said: “Everything in government is embedded in politics and is embedded in accountability.”
“So these kind of discussions about independence and accountability, it’s kind of just oranges and apples,” Calabria said during a forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “What you have is a desire to make sure the data gives you the right answer.”
In the first months of Trump’s second administration, thousands of federal government employees were walked out the door as part of efforts by the White House and its aides. Government Efficiency Department. The White House has also offered a “deferred resignation” proposal in exchange for financial incentives, such as months of paid leave, to nearly all federal employees who choose to leave their jobs. It also moved to lay off probationary employees — those who have generally been working for less than a year and who have not yet gained civil service protections.
“The statistical system is still working, but the threats are very serious,” said Beth Jarosz, vice president of the Public Data Users Association, who was not involved in the report. “There are staff cuts, contractual services have been reduced. We see that showing up in the cancellation of data products, and reduced data collection on things like consumer prices.”
The team that prepared the report noted that it had “sparse information” about the detailed impacts of the cuts because agencies would not provide them “perhaps out of caution or because they are not permitted to communicate with outside entities.”
The hardest hit agency was the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the US Department of Education, which lost 95% of its staff. The agency tracks educational trends with the goal of improving outcomes, and the loss of staff halted most data collection operations earlier in the year, according to the report. The report said that many foreign contracts have been restored since then, but to a lesser extent.
The workforce at the Social Security Administration’s Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics has been cut by nearly half. The cuts eliminated retirement and disability research, among other things, the report said.
The Energy Information Administration, the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, and the National Agricultural Census Service lost 25% to 40% of their staff. The cuts have led to the halt or delay of reports on the energy industry and the cancellation of a survey of farmworkers and some state agricultural reports.
The nation’s largest statistical agency, the U.S. Census Bureau, lost at least 15% of its employees this year, according to the report.
Along with staff reductions, some obstacles to the political independence of statistical agencies were removed this year. The Trump administration made unsubstantiated claims about biased data; Removal of the heads of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics; Failure to fill key leadership vacancies; They named political appointees with other positions to fill leadership positions previously held by civil servants, according to the report.
“These actions undermine public confidence in federal statistics,” the report said.
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