Photo by NASA. Aaron R. Williams and Claire McKay Bowen One of our favorite data sources is weekly unemployment insurance (UI) claims from the Department of Labor. The data demonstrate the value of administrative data…
Photo by Stephen Dawson. Barry Johnson In our last post, we discussed the origin and evolution of federal statistics and noted that, as survey response rates have declined and user expectations have evolved, agencies are…
2025 was a challenging year for public data, but the deep engagement of the data user community has been a silver lining. As threats to public data grew, so did data user engagement. We witnessed…
Photo by U.S. Census Bureau. Barry Johnson In previous posts, we’ve raised the point that federal statistics are the essential—though often unrecognized—ingredients that impact all aspects of our lives: from determining whether we need a…
Photo by Markus Spiske. Claire McKay Bowen and Aaron R. Williams The collection of data that fuels everything from advanced research to everyday decision making is, by many measures, underappreciated and insufficiently rewarded. In research,…
Photo by Xi Lipton. Claire McKay Bowen and Aaron R. Williams Government data shape and improve our lives from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep. Here’s a quick look…
Photo by Alexey Demidov Aaron R. Williams and Claire McKay Bowen Deciphering the economy is difficult even under ideal circumstances. “Monetary policy is like driving while looking through the rearview mirror” is a popular expression…
By Claire McKay Bowen and Aaron R. Williams Image from https://unsplash.com/photos/colored-pencil-lined-up-on-top-of-white-surface-l3N9Q27zULw. When we take a bite of cake, we often focus on its presentation, decoration, texture, or flavor. Rarely do we think about the ingredients…
By Claire McKay Bowen and Aaron R. WilliamsImage by Jeremy SeemanBlog is cross posted with Data Rescue Project. Can you answer these questions? If you struggle to answer any of these, you are not alone.…
Quick Summary of the Report The federal statistical system has been struggling with budget constraints for several years. In the first six months of 2025 threats to the integrity of the system increased substantially, including…
The moment many of us in the public data community have feared has come to pass: the President has fired the head of a federal statistical agency because the data are politically inconvenient. Today President…
Join us for the first episode in our new conversation series, Taking Stock: Real-time Reflections on the Public Data and Evidence Ecosystem. In this series, we’ll be taking stock of the sweeping changes to the U.S. data…