Matt Unrath

It has been the honor of my life to serve as Commissioner of BLS alongside the many dedicated civil servants tasked with measuring a vast and dynamic economy. It is vital and important work and I thank them for their service to this nation.

screenshot of the linked post titled "Trump’s firing of BLS commissioner is undemocratic and economically dangerous" by Heidi Shierholz, which reads: Today, Trump directed his team to fire the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) because he didn’t like the jobs numbers they released. This is a move straight out of an autocratic playbook. BLS is one of the most respected statistical agencies in the world, known for its methodological rigor, independence, and transparency. The president’s belief that the BLS commissioner personally “produced” the jobs numbers is preposterous and shows a complete misunderstanding of how government statistical agencies operate. These data are the product of careful work by hundreds of expert economists, statisticians, and civil servants following transparent, well-established methodologies.

From @hshierholz.bsky.social: Trump's firing of BLS commissioner is undemocratic and economically dangerous. Between illegal firings, starving data agencies of resources, and now political intimidation, the US looks set to run into the next economic downturn flying blind

www.epi.org/press/trumps...

👇👇👇

Opinion | Columbia’s Administrators Are Fooling Themselves

A timely and trenchant piece by Suresh Naidu. When future generations sift through the wreckage of our era, they’ll find it strewn with the institutional and personal failures of leaders both great and small.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/o...

I hope Pope Leo continues to speak against starvation and barbarity in Gaza and U.S. bishops continue to defend those targeted for arrest and internment here. The Church has a unique, non-ideological voice on behalf of the dispossessed and displaced, like Jesus himself was.

BLS and Census are planning to put the CPS online within a few years to help address these nonresponse issues, but currently have nowhere near the funding they need to test the new internet instrument or study how that transition will impact official statistics.

Do you remember when child poverty fell to a record low in 2021 thanks to the expanded CTC?

It turns out that the SPM for kids was just as low in 2020 thanks to historically generous unemployment benefits. We missed it because UI is so under-reported in the CPS ASEC.

Senate Parliamentarian advises several more GOP provisions violate the Byrd Rule, including the provision to mandate states cover a portion of SNAP benefits.

Powell says he is concerned about the impact of cuts at the statistical agencies. High-quality statistics are "a huge public good," he says. "I hate to see us cutting back on that... I would want to continue investing in that for the good of the general public."
#EconSky

Military style ICE raids in our communities. David Huerta was beaten and dragged away.

Because he saw them and stood up for justice. Because he’s not afraid.

Neither are we.

On MONDAY let's #FreeDavidHuerta, #FreeThemAll

11:00 AM @ Grand Park in Downtown LA (200 N Grand Ave)

PQ: Stata module to read, write, and manage Parquet files in pq provides commands for working with Apache Parquet files in Stata. Parquet is a columnar storage file format designed to efficiently store and process large datasets. This package allows Stata users

If you use Stata and parquet files, I developed a stata plugin that could help: ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode.... You can read/write parquet files directly from stata (Caveat: tested on windows and linux, but not mac)

The House Just Passed The Biggest Medicaid Cut in U.S. History, Twice the Size of Reagan's Cuts So much for realignment. New analysis from UnidosUS shows the House’s cuts to Medicaid and SNAP are unprecedented, twice as large as anything under President Reagan,

I was curious how the Medicaid cuts the House passed stacked up historically. That's a big lift, but @standorn.bsky.social did the numbers.

It's the largest on record, twice the size of the early 1980s Reagan cuts. Same is true for SNAP. Here's my write-up:
mikekonczal.substack.com/p/the-house-...

The reconciliation bill passed by the House GOP yesterday alters the social safety net in many significant ways that are easy to miss if you blink.

Let’s take, for one, SNAP, a program where the federal government currently pays 100% of benefits.

Not a good idea to convert the leaders of the federal statistical agencies into political appointees. It would undermine trust.
Send in your comment today to object to this change in the federal civil service. This article has the link.
#econsky

IRS Direct File is clear-cut government success story, a shining example of efficiency and social value

Every year it will save Americans billions of dollars and hundreds of millions of hours in tax preparation costs

So of course Trump and Musk want to kill it

Screenshot from an article describing staffing cuts in the HHS office responsible for calculating federal poverty guidelines.

kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

In a nuts-and-bolts sense, I think I have a good sense of how this happens. But in a much more important sense, it’s incomprehensible that schools are still taking this stance when democracy is on the line

Federal Workers Walk Into Chaos Amid Return to Office (Gift Article) President Trump has described his new in-office requirement as a way to ensure workers are doing their jobs. He sees potentially leading more employees to quit as an added benefit.

The cruelty is the point.

Allowing remote work is a highly cost-effective way for the govt to recruit and retain talented staff. Census can hire economists, statisticians, sociologists and demographers from around the country.

Plus, it's cheaper. Less govt office space, and workers trade lower wages for the flexibility!

Consolidating Census, BLS and BEA in Suitland only made sense if staff could telework.

There's simply not enough space in the building for everyone to work there everyday.

Hard to overstate how mean and misguided this is.

WHAT WE FOUND We found that the bureau does not have effective strategies to address staffing gaps and high vacancies in FR positions. Specifically, the bureau did not: • Meet its staffing goals for ACS, CPS, and NCVS. • Implement a process to track and assess vacancy information from the regions. Without a workforce plan, the bureau lacks a comprehensive strategy to ensure it has the necessary FR staff to help accomplish its mission of providing high-quality data. Unaddressed FR staffing gaps increase the risks of lower response rates on surveys and higher attrition of other field staff, who bear the burden of increased workloads. Developing and implementing a workforce plan for FRs will help the bureau address the issues we identify in this report.

NEW: The Census Bureau hasn't been recruiting and retaining enough interviewers for three key surveys, including the source of the monthly job report, and lacks a plan for building up a field representative staff, the bureau's internal watchdog, Commerce OIG, finds
www.oig.doc.gov/wp-content/O...

NEW: The Commerce Department is giving federal employees at the Census Bureau and most other parts of the department until April 17 to apply for a voluntary early retirement authority or voluntary separation incentive payments offer if they're offboarded by May 3, according to emails shared with NPR

TWO Virtual Mentoring Events Jobs for Economists: Transitioning Between Sectors

The Society of Government Economists is holding back-to-back mentoring workshops on transitioning between sectors

The first one is on March 4th at 6pm EST

The second is on March 13th at 7pm EST

mailchi.mp/a681e5651456...

Trump’s foreign aid freeze a ‘death sentence’ for many humanitarian groups Most humanitarian agencies operate just ahead of insolvency in the best of times, Nate Radomski, the executive director of American Jesuits International, says.

“This halt interrupts critical life-saving work including clean water to infants, basic education for kids, ending the trafficking of girls, and providing medications to children and others suffering from disease. It stops assistance in countries critical to U.S. interests...”

USCCB lays off 50 migration staffers Across the country, Catholic Charities agencies could also soon face layoffs

“Since the new administration assumed office, no resettlement agency including CRS, have received reimbursements for outstanding invoices related to the programs we administer. The last reimbursement payment the USCCB received from the Federal Government was on January 15th."

Exclusive: Catholic Relief Services lays off staff, cuts programs after USAID shakeup An internal email says CRS is likely to be cut in half this year from Trump's freeze of U.S. foreign assistance. Cuts will "cost people's lives and livelihoods," a former bishops' conference official ...

"To target this tiny portion of the federal budget in such a haphazard and irresponsible way is going to cost people's lives and livelihoods," Colecchi said. "It is not a thoughtful or humane way to go about treating programs that help the poorest of the poor all over the world."

Data remains available via API, and data.census.gov is still live.

And now these data have been taken down again!

Where's the public statement clarifying what data is being made unavailable, for what reason, and when it will be restored?

Has Census issued a public statement about pulling data from the FTP server?