As the Trump administration guts and otherwise interferes with federal statistical agencies, nearly 90 percent of economists recently surveyed by Reuters are concerned about the reliability of official government data on the economy.<\/p>\n
From July 11 to 24, Reuters polled<\/a> economists\u2014including \u201cNobel Laureates, former policymakers, academics from top U.S. universities, and economists from major banks, consultancies and think tanks\u201d\u2014and found that 89 of 100 of them \u201cwere concerned about the quality of official U.S. economic data,\u201d with 41 saying they are \u201cvery concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n Reuters\u2019 report shows that alarm over Trump\u2019s cuts to key agencies that collect and deliver data, such as statistics on jobs and inflation (to say nothing of other data<\/a> impacted by Trump, such as that on health, weather, and education), has reached fever pitch.<\/p>\n Erica Groshen, former Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, told Reuters, \u201cI can\u2019t help but worry some deadlines [for future data releases] are going to be missed and undetected biases or other errors are going to start creeping into some of these reports just because of the reduction in staff.\u201d<\/p>\n Groshen also noted \u201canother very big risk\u201d: that \u201call of the current administration\u2019s changes will make civil service employees more like political appointees.\u201d<\/p>\n