The federal budget for collecting statistics has been dropping for years, and the Trump administration is continuing that trend. The American Statistical Association has been working on a project documenting and discussing the trend called ASA FedStat Health Project. The project back in 2023, during the Biden administration. The final report called The Nation’s Data at a Crossroads: Assessing the Health of the Federal Statistical Agencies is apparently due this fall, but in the meantime, there’s a “Year Two Status Report” with updates through July 2025.
I’m as much in favor of trimming unneeded federal spending as the next person, perhaps even more so, but when it comes to federal spending on statistics, there just isn’t much meat on the bone. As the ASA reports:
Collectively, federal statistics cost about $7 billion in a non-census year—just
0.1% of total federal spending and less than 0.03% of GDP. Roughly half of
this amount is for the 13 principal federal statistical agencies. … [F]rom
2009 to 2024, inflation-adjusted budgets for most principal statistical
agencies fell by 14%, while other nondefense discretionary spending
rose 16% …
With the additional energy for cutting these agencies from the Trump administration, the consequences are starting to show.
As one example, consider statistics from the US Department of Education. I’ll just note here that personally, it seems to me that creating the Department of Education as a separate cabinet-level agency, rather than the previous structure of having it as part of the broader Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (now Health and Human Services) was probably a mistake. The federal role in education, for better or worse, is quite small. But one place where the federal government is well-positioned is to serve a central repository for all of the state-level data, which then allows for tracking patterns over time and making comparisons across states. But the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is now down to three staff members. In addition, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), sometimes called the “Nation’s Report Card,” provides test scores across the states in reading and math. It used to so so for children at ages 9, 13, and 17–except that the age-17 evaluation has now been cut for budgetary reasons. But hey, does it really matter if we know much high schoolers have learned?
Inflation statistics from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics are taking a hit, as well. The Consumer Price Index statistics are based on actual humans who survey prices in actual stores in actual cities. But the number of cities in being cut back. There are also Producer Price Index statistics, except that the indexes for about 350 products are now being cut for cost reasons. But hey, it’s not like accurate inflations affect real-world stuff like, say, annual increases in Social Security benefits or whether your own pay raises are keeping up with inflation.
These examples can easily be multiplied. I’ve tried in some previous posts to explain the foolishness of continually cutting statistical agencies. Federal statistics are of course wildly useful to policymakers, but also to industry, journalists, and citizens. Here, I’ll just note that the statistical agencies face real non-budgetary challenges as well. For example, response rates for federal surveys are dropping (as I’ve discussed here and here), which makes it harder to estimate true underlying values. The vast improvements in information technology and current AI tools make it costlier to protect confidentiality.
If you are someone who believes that federal statistics are imperfect, then welcome to the club, and maybe don’t keep slashing their budgets. If you are someone who welcomes federal statistics that deliver news that you like to hear but grouse that federal statistics are totally politicized when they deliver news you don’t want to hear, maybe grow up and get over that. There is indeed something worse than imperfect federal statistics, which is trying to operate in a modern economy without such statistics. The ASA report summarizes:
Despite our grave concerns about what we have witnessed through July 2025—including data that are no longer collected and products that are no longer being published—at present we are confident that data users can trust the federal statistics that are still being released. We have not seen any meddling by the Executive Branch in the underlying data or published estimates. … Yet continued staffing and budget reductions for the statistical agencies could affect quality in the future. We are at an inflection point … [W]hat we have observed is uncoordinated and unplanned reductions with no visible plan for the future.
I’ve written about the importance of federal statistical funding a number of times ovr the years, although not recently. Those would like more might begin with:
