Changes to the Federal Statistical System: Monthly Update

New Disclosure Avoidance Policy Raising Serious Concerns: The Department of Commerce Secretary signed off on an order on disclosure avoidance this month, handcuffing the US Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis on the techniques they can use to protect the privacy of respondents. The order only allows coarsening and suppression and goes so far as to prohibit the use of noise infusion. Data users are concerned about the future of such protection methods as differential privacy, synthetic data, and data swapping; the potential effects of the policy on the availability of small-area tables and public use microdata files; and, in general, the lack of a process for obtaining public input. DataIndex.US published this post on the order: A New Commerce Policy Could Mean Less Public Data, Not Better Public Data.

Schedule Policy/Career Applied to Statisticians in White House Office of Management and Budget: The White House released an executive order this month applying the at-will status to some 8,000 federal employees. Titled Implementing Schedule Policy/Career in the Excepted Service, it applies the at-will status to an unspecified number of statisticians in the Office of Management and Budget and the chief of staff for the Economic Research Service. No other federal statistical agencies are named in the document, but these agencies could still be affected through the application of Schedule Policy/Career to many parent agency offices on which they depend (e.g., human resources, counsel, contracting, security). As previously stated, the application of Schedule Policy/Career to statistical agency employees and the reclassification of SES positions to "general" introduce the potential to undermine the ability of the federal statistical agency workforce to withstand improper outside influence to meet the requirements of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018.

Limited Hiring at Bureau of Economic Analysis Makes It the Fourth Statistical Agency to Hire: The BEA advertised for a handful of economist positions this month, joining the Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Census Bureau, and Economic Research Service advertising for positions. BLS and the Census Bureau have posted scores of positions since early March, while ERS advertised for two positions in April. Speaking of BEA, the agency released new and expanded statistics on the role of global value chains in the US economy, covering all major components of GDP—consumer spending, investment, government spending, and exports. The agency also reported that it would be releasing its New Foreign Investment Statistics this month, a month sooner than in prior years. 

We also note that the General Accountability Office released a report titled: 2030 Census: Census Bureau Needs Additional Data to Inform Design Decisions. The Census Project covered it in their insights column. In addition, the House Appropriations Committee advanced an $8 million increase for BLS in an FY27 funding bill. While only a 1% increase, the level is significant in an environment in which flat funding is considered good news, especially in the US House of Representatives. The same bill level funds the National Center for Health Statistics at $187.4 million and cuts the budget for the National Center for Education Statistics by 38% from its FY26 level. The House NCES level largely aligns with the president's budget request level and the FY25 spending level for the agency whose staff and operations have been reduced to a small fraction of pre-2025 levels.  

Recent Reports and Working Papers:

·      The Value of Reliable Statistics, NBER working paper on the effect of the August 1, 2025, firing of BLS Commissioner McEntarfer on policy uncertainty and macroeconomic outcomes

·      Voices from the Data Community: How 2025 Has Impacted Public Data Users

·      The Federal Data Field Guide

·      The Integrity of Public Access to Federal Data

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