The ranks of U.S. government statisticians were weakened last year by layoffs and acquisitions. With funding dwindling and attacks on independence coming, the data is being used to make informed decisions about everything from the nation’s economy to its demographics, according to a new report released Wednesday by outside experts.
A report released by the American Statistical Association said one agency lost 95% of its staff this year due to government layoffs in the months after President Donald Trump took office, while others lost about a quarter to more than a third. In addition to veteran staff with deep institutional knowledge, some of the layoffs involve new hires aimed at injecting new blood into the agency, the annual report said.
Nancy Potok, the former U.S. chief statistician during Trump’s first administration and a member of the team that wrote the report, said Wednesday that “things are getting worse.” “It’s like falling off a cliff, it’s a very serious situation.”
The Office of Management and Budget, which coordinates the U.S. chief statistician’s data collection system, did not respond to an emailed inquiry Wednesday morning about the report.
Yet when asked last month about concerns about the politicization of statistical agencies, Mark Calabria, who was appointed the U.S. chief statistician in July, said: “Everything in government is rooted in politics, rooted in accountability.”
“So these debates about independence and accountability, it’s sort of oranges and apples,” Calabria told a forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington. “All you have to do is make sure the data gives you the right answer.”
In the early months of Trump’s second administration, thousands of federal workers were deported as part of an effort by the White House and its Department of Government Effectiveness. The White House has also offered a “postponed resignation” proposal to nearly all federal employees who choose to leave their jobs in exchange for financial incentives, such as months of paid leave. It has also laid off probationary employees – who typically have been on the job for less than a year and have not yet received civil service protections.
“Statistical systems are still functioning, but the threats are very serious,” said Beth Jarosz, vice president of the Association of Public Data Users, who was not involved in the report. “There’s been a reduction in staff, there’s been a reduction in contracted services. We’re seeing that reflected in the cancellation of data products, reductions in data collection on things like consumer prices.”
The team behind the report noted that they have “little information” on the detailed impact of the cuts because the agencies won’t provide it “either out of caution or because they are not allowed to communicate with outside entities.”
The agency hardest hit was the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, which lost 95% of its staff. The agency tracks education trends with the goal of improving outcomes, but stopped most data collection earlier this year due to staff attrition, the report said. Many external contracts have resumed, but at a reduced scope, the report said.
The workforce at the Social Security Administration’s Office of Research, Evaluation and Statistics has been reduced by almost half. The cuts eliminated programs such as retirement and disability studies, the report said.
The Energy Information Administration, the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service and the National Agricultural Statistics Service each lost 25% to 40% of their staff. The cuts resulted in interruptions or delays in reporting on the energy industry and the cancellation of surveys on farm workers and some state-specific agriculture reports.
The U.S. Census Bureau, the nation’s largest statistical agency, has lost at least 15% of its staff this year, the report said.
In addition to the job cuts, some barriers to the statistical agency’s political independence were removed this year. The Trump administration made unsubstantiated claims of bias in the data; removed the heads of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics; failed to fill key leadership vacancies; and appointed political appointees to other positions to fill leadership positions held by career civil servants, the report said.
“These actions undermine public trust in federal statistics,” the report said.
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