One of the most underrated revolutions of the past 50 years is the explosion of easily accessible data. Whether it’s detailed breakdowns of the characteristics of every neighborhood in the US, improved weather forecasting models that give us extra days to prepare for hurricanes, or personalized genomic analyses that can give us early warnings about disease, there has never been more information more readily available than in the last few decades.
For businesses and consumers alike, this data surge has been a massive boon to the collective bottom line. A deeper understanding of our world has led to more stable markets and saved lives through disaster planning or improved medicine. But the last year has shown that this data revolution is at risk, especially for the government-produced statistics that have become the backbone for myriad industries and private providers. As this core of information erodes, there is a real risk that we may be sliding into a less measured era.
A future without data is a future in which major actors in our economic system are flying blind. Decision-makers from the Federal Reserve and major Wall Street banks to small businesses and average American households may have to replace good information with vibes and guesses, opening the door to catastrophic mistakes.
A data downgrade
Perhaps the best way to understand the threat that data degredation poses is to focus on the global gold standard for information collection: the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While other federal agencies like the Census Bureau also do valuable work, the BLS has, for over a century, been one of the most granular sources of data on the US jobs market, prices, and much more. And the data has only gotten better over the decades: If you want to know how the price of groceries in Boston has changed over the last decade, how many florists are employed across the country, or how many hours Americans spend hanging out with their friends, the BLS is your destination.
Over the past few years, however, the BLS has faced tough times. A stagnant budget, a decline in the number of regular Americans and businesses responding to crucial surveys, and a need to modernize data-gathering techniques all complicated the process of compiling economic statistics. The increasing strain on the agency led the American Statistical Association to conclude in a December 2025 report that “the nation risks losing the statistical data infrastructure that enables sound policy, economic growth, and efficient and smooth governance.”
For people who rely on the BLS, the past year has raised acute concerns. The first was President Donald Trump’s firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer in July. Revisions to that month’s jobs report showed that the US had created far fewer jobs than initially reported in the previous two months. Revisions are a standard part of the BLS data collection process, and the size of the adjustments was well within historical norms. Economists warned that the firing could be a harbinger of political meddling in the crucial job and price figures. Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Petersen Institute for International Economics, called the firing a “five-alarm intentional harm to the integrity of US economic data and the entire statistical system.” Skanda Amarnath, Executive Director of Employ America, a think tank, said, “public trust is permanently harmed when the BLS commissioner is fired after one bad jobs report.”
A few months after McEntarfer’s firing, the BLS was rocked by another unprecedented event. The 43-day government shutdown that spanned October and November was not only the longest closure in federal history, it also led to another unprecedented event: Crucial surveys on employment and inflation were not conducted for the first time in nearly 80 years. The modern unemployment rate, which dates back to 1948, had its first gap in its storied history. The consumer price index, one of our main measures of inflation, went unpublished for the first time since its modern form was devised in 1947.