Professors Katharine Abraham and John Haltiwanger, together with Steven Davis from the University of Chicago, argue in a recent Roll Call commentary that proposed cuts in funding for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) would undermine policy makers’ ability to make sound decisions.  In the face of declining real funding levels over the past several years, the BLS thus far has managed to preserve its most important data collection programs.   At the Fiscal Year 2016 funding levels being proposed for the BLS by the House and especially the Senate, however, valuable data series almost certainly would be lost.  If anything, the authors argue, the BLS should be funded to provide more information about today’s changing labor market, not less.

The full text of the commentary can be found here.