Changes to the Federal Statistical System: Monthly Update

Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau Hiring The Bureau of Labor Statistics is advertising for economists through the DOL Recent Graduates program and the Census Bureau recently posted six advertisements to USAJobs for permanent, full-time survey statisticians, data scientists, and mathematical statisticians. The advertisements follow a year in which both agencies primarily advertised for field representatives in part-time, time-limited capacities. The move also follows the November 2025 federal hiring guidance from the Office of Personnel Management and Office of Management.

Education Statistics Study and Project Tracker A new ASA resource documents the status of National Center for Education Statistics studies, data collections, projects, and data tools. Of the 71 items, 11 are categorized as active, nine as active but reduced in scope, 24 as inactive, 22 as complete, and two as unknown. 

Concern for USDA Crop Estimates The final release of the corn-harvested data for the 2025 growing season from the National Agricultural Statistics Service attracted significant media attention because, as Reuters reported it on February 10, “USDA hiked [its estimate for harvested acres] to 91.3 million acres, up 1.3% from the previous estimate and 5.2% higher than in June.” A wide variety of factors have been offered, including increasing reluctance by farmers to participate in surveys, staffing cuts at NASS and other USDA agencies, a large increase in acres planted over 2024, and smaller adverse impacts on harvests due to poor weather. USDA is conducting a review.

Resources

• The Nation’s Data at Risk: 2025 Report, our comprehensive report released on December 10 on the health of the federal statistical agencies, updating developments and analysis since the inaugural report from July 2024. The recording and presentation slides for our December 10 webinar are also available. 
• The Nation’s Data at a Crossroads, our July 31, 2025, status report on the statistical agency developments for the first half of 2025.
• Our Near Real-Time Monitoring of statistical-agency developments.
• Our monthly Count on Stats summaries for November and December.

We also request your feedback on our 2025 work and your input on 2026 priorities. We highly value your engagement and are eager to learn more about your specific interests in our work.



Should you have any follow-up questions, detailed comments, or suggestions on how we can improve our monitoring and reporting, we invite you to schedule an appointment with our team:



• Steve Pierson: spierson@amstat.org
• Michelle Crosby: michelle@amstat.org

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