Tag: Bureau of Labor Statistics

How to Talk to Your Member of Congress

As you advocate for a robust federal statistical system, one way to gain the attention of your member of Congress or their staff is to be familiar with your congressional district’s economy and workforce using federal statistics.

Recently the American Statistical Association, in partnership with APDU and the Congressional Management Foundation, sponsored a webinar tutorial on the subject. The recording highlights the rich trove of resources from Bureau of Economic Affairs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census that contribute to this important set of data.

A False “Falsification” Alarm

Census Project Co-Director Terri Ann LowenthalBy Terri Ann Lowenthal

It’s the first Friday in May, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will report the unemployment rate and job growth numbers for April. The monthly jobs report is a time-honored tradition dating back to 1940. The U.S. Census Bureau collects the data in the Current Population Survey, a joint project of Census and BLS.

The labor force stats are highly anticipated, driving the stock market this way or that and providing fodder for the latest political sound bites from both sides of the aisle. But can Americans trust the numbers?

Last November, while I was assessing the damage to 2020 Census planning and ongoing American Community Survey (ACS) caused by the recent government shutdown, the New York Post’s John Crudele provided a rude awakening from my daydreams of Thanksgiving turkey and pumpkin pie. On November 19, 2013, he ran a column with the bombshell headline: “Census ‘faked’ 2012 election jobs report.” Whoosh! The allegation — that the Census Bureau, with the White House’s blessing, falsified employment numbers to boost the president’s reelection chances in 2012 — spread like wildfire among critics of the administration, with Crudele himself fanning the flames with subsequent conspiracy theories about the Census Bureau firing and rehiring 2010 Census workers to boost job creation numbers in advance of the mid-term elections. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee leaders promptly announced an investigation into the “shocking” allegations, asking the census director whether the agency’s data are “reliable, and if not, whether Census Bureau officials knowingly and intentionally fabricated the data on which they are based.”

I bit my tongue at the time; the focus of this blog and The Census Project’s work is the decennial census and related ACS. But I’m publicly putting a rhetorical period at the end of this sad story because, as the New York Post columns irresponsibly (and falsely) imply, maybe Americans shouldn’t trust any numbers emanating from the nation’s best-known statistical agency. And if people lose confidence in the Census Bureau’s integrity, maybe they’ll take a pass when the next census or survey questionnaire appears in their mailbox (or on their computer screen). (Note to conspiracy theorists: Please don’t complain when response rates in the next census come up short in your congressional district.)

Yesterday, the Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General (IG) issued a report on its investigation into the Post-fueled allegations of systemic, widespread and politically motivated data fabrication. You can read the report, but here’s the bottom line. The IG found no evidence that the admittedly-guilty survey taker’s supervisors told him to falsify survey data. (The Census Bureau did investigate and terminate the employee who provided the “facts” for Crudele’s theory — in 2011, one year before the supposedly cooked job numbers were published!) There was no evidence that supervisors changed survey responses or tried to hide reports of data fabrication. No evidence that the Philadelphia Regional Census Office manipulated unemployment data before the 2012 presidential election. (Columnist Crudele wildly suggested that the Philadelphia regional director could be involved in such a scheme because, you know, the City of Brotherly Love is awfully close to Washington, D.C. I cannot make this stuff up.) And no evidence of widespread survey data falsification within an alleged Philly office cabal.

The inspector general did identify general weaknesses in Census Bureau procedures for detecting and preventing data falsification. I hope the agency works quickly to institute the IG’s recommendations for strengthening protocols in this area.

But don’t bother looking for a mea culpa in the New York Post. In an initial column yesterday, John Crudele proffered that Current Population Survey response rates are suffering because the census regional offices “seem reluctant to falsify the surveys,” now that the IG, Congress, and Mr. Crudele himself are watching. At 7:19 p.m., he posted a response to the IG’s report. Surprise! The columnist accused the inspector general of a “whitewash” and called for a special prosecutor to investigate the investigation.

Hey, when a thoroughly independent review doesn’t reach the conclusions you’ve already insisted are true, the only recourse is to keep investigating until someone agrees with you! Some people just haven’t met a conspiracy theory they’re willing to give up. The rest of my fellow Americans should look beyond the sensational headlines and have confidence that the foundation of our democratic system of governance and the tools for an informed electorate — both the envy of much of the world — are in good hands.

Sorry, Come Back Later (Make an Educated Guess in the Meantime)

by Terri Ann LowenthalTerri Ann Lowenthal

Last April, I had a brilliant idea: “Let’s stop collecting any information.” Okay, it wasn’t an original idea, I quickly admitted; I pilfered it from a lawmaker who introduced a bill to nix all Census Bureau surveys, save a bare-bones decennial population count.

Census fans were incredulous. That April 23 blog post had record readership; even Stephen Colbert lampooned the bill, and a synopsis of the show quoted my blog. One of my tongue-in-cheek comments — “Cool! Then we might not need congressmen, because just about all of them rely on Census Bureau data to justify their existence.” — apparently struck a chord, judging from reprints in the press.

So far, only 15 colleagues have joined Rep. Jeff Duncan’s (R-SC) quest for an information void. Odds are H.R. 1638 won’t be seeing the legislative light of day any time soon. But do not despair, data-phobes! Congress has managed, through nonfeasance, to accomplish what a teensy fraction of the people’s house cannot on its own.

Thanks to the government shutdown, the Census Bureau’s work has come to a grinding halt. No harassing phone calls to unwitting, over-burdened citizens. No pesky, door-knocking surveyors invading the privacy of hard-working Americans who just want to live a quiet, government-free life (as soon as someone fills that pothole down the street). Even the duty-bound who want to cooperate (however grudgingly) from the comfort of their own computers are out of luck; online survey response is closed for business.

Not only is the populace finally free from the burden of government surveys, it’s relieved of the responsibility of having to consider objective, reliable information at all. The Census Bureau’s website is completely shut down. I’m thinking this is sort of a trial run for H.R. 1638, or maybe for last year’s mystifying House vote to eliminate the American Community Survey. No surveys and censuses, no data. No data, no need for thoughtful analysis of society’s challenges and informed consideration of solutions. We’ll just resort to rhetorical talking points and ideological pronouncements. Wait, wait… something is ringing a bell here…

It’s not just the Census Bureau that has shuttered the windows, of course. No one seems to be manning the websites at most other federal statistical agencies. (Furloughed Bureau of Economic Analysis employees, who are responsible for factoids like the Gross Domestic Product, “sincerely regret the inconvenience.” The GDP must not be very consequential, though, because H.R. 1638 would ax one of the main data sources for this indicator — the Economic Census.)

Not that I’m looking for a silver lining in the mess of the standoff on Capitol Hill, but the media took note of the data vacuum when the monthly unemployment and labor force figures, scheduled for release last Friday, went AWOL. Did we make any progress in job creation in September? Which sectors are hiring and which ones are shedding workers? Legislators usually have their press releases drafted in advance of the monthly first-Friday statistical release, waiting to put their respective spins on the numbers. I wonder how many ever stop to think about the genesis of that vital information — the Census Bureau conducts the survey and the Bureau of Labor Statistics crunches the numbers. Now the data gatherers are idle and the analysts are sitting at home, while the first week of October slides by, threatening the timely release of this month’s labor force data on the first day of November (which happens to fall on a Friday).

Sure, it’s hard to compete with war memorials and cancer drug trials in the battle for public opinion; statistics don’t stand a… well… chance of pulling at the heartstrings. But when Congress gets around to finalizing 2014 agency budgets, let’s hope it gives a little more thought to the public good that all these temporarily missing numbers serve.

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A note to my dear readers who aren’t steeped in the world of statistics: “Chance” magazine is a publication of the American Statistical Association, the world’s largest organization of people working in the statistical sciences.

Sequestration Cuts’ Impact on Statistical Agencies

Steve PiersonThis blog post is provided by Steve Pierson of the American Statistical Association. Steve found three letters from statistical agencies that indicate the impact of the so-called sequestration cuts on these agencies.

In response to a request from Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (MD-D), federal agencies have sent letters to Mikulski on how sequestration would affect them. The letters are posted on the Senate Appropriations Commitee website and contain sequestration impacts for the Census Bureau, BLS and NASS. The other agency letters do not go to a level of detail to include the impacts on other federal statistical agencies (BEA, BJS, BTS, EIA. ERS, NCES, NCHS, NCSES, IRS SOI, SSA ORES).

In the letter from the Commerce Department, the following impacts for the Census Bureau are listed:

Sequestration would have to cut a total of $46 million from the Department’s Census Bureau. The Census Bureau will be forced to significantly cut contract dollars and not fill hundreds of vacancies, pushing back research and testing for the 2020 Decennial Census as well as seriously delaying the release of critical economic and demographic data needed for this calendar year.

The last benchmark of economic statistics supporting America’s assessment of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and other key economic indicators was taken in 2007, prior to the recession. If the sequestration cuts move forward, the Census Bureau will be ready to make major departures from past operational designs that are intended to save money without diminishing quality. The Census Bureau has committed to executing a Census that would cost less per household in real dollars. Cuts now are virtually guaranteed to force the Census Bureau to ask for larger investments later, putting at risk that goal of achieving more significant forced to impose a six-month delay in releasing vital statistics for these indicators, putting at risk our ability to take accurate stock of current economic conditions and well-being and potentially impacting policy making and economic decisions in the private sector.

Furthermore, delays in developmental work for the 2020 Decennial Census will increase the risk that the Census Bureau will not be ready to make major departures from past operational designs that are intended to save money without diminishing quality. The Census Bureau has committed to executing a Census that would cost less per household in real dollars. Cuts now are virtually guaranteed to force the Census Bureau to ask for larger investments later, putting at risk that goal of achieving more significant savings.

In the letter from the Department of Agriculture, the section on the National Agricultural Statistical Service states that sequestration would stop FY13 scheduled activities for the Census of Agriculture including data processing. The letter goes on to say that data will be incomplete and not statistically sound for publication, which will “negatively affect decisions made by farmers, business and governments and ultimately will bring volatility to food markets and impact prices consumers pay.”

The Department of Labor letter states, “With millions in reductions, BLS would have to eliminate or reduce some of its programs.”

Presumably what is presented above for these three agency is paraphrased from much more substantive documents presented by Census, BLS and NASS to their respective departments.

Given the impacts of sequestration to the federal statistical agencies (and NSF and NIH), the ASA continues to urge its members to head the call late last year of 2012 President Bob Rodriguez: ASA President Asks ASA Members to Help Avoid Steep Cuts to NSF, NIH, and Federal Statistical Agencies.

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