America’s government shutdown risks inflicting lasting damage at the agencies that collect, parse and publish the country’s data.
Census Bureau workers are visiting job-search website Indeed.com at rates 40 percent higher than before the agency’s funding ran out in mid-December, based on the company’s data. The Commerce Department branch is responsible for collecting facts about America’s population and economy, and many of its employees are furloughed.
“When people aren’t getting paid, they start looking elsewhere for work,” said Martha Gimbel, research director at Indeed. “If the federal government starts losing that knowledge to the private sector, it’s going to be really hard to build it back up.”
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, which produces gross domestic product data, is also closed, but Indeed doesn’t have enough data on its employees to trace their search activity. The Department of Labor -- responsible for figures on jobs and the consumer price index -- was funded back in September, and its search activity looks normal, Gimbel said.
Brain drain is a concern across federal departments as shutdowns become a matter of political course in Washington. If the statistical agencies begin to bleed seasoned workers with deep knowledge of complicated surveys and methodologies, it could be a particular loss for American businesses and financial-market participants who rely on their data and analysis.
“They are basically providing the statistical infrastructure for the decisions made by the entire private sector of the economy, as well as government,” Lawrence Katz, a Harvard University professor and former Labor Department chief economist, said of the data agencies. He noted that government jobs are secure and fulfilling but may not pay highly-educated people as much as companies or universities would.
At the margin, “you may lose some talent who have been around for a while, who have always had very good private-sector opportunities,” Katz said.
Opportunities outside of the public sphere are especially plentiful now, with unemployment at 3.9 percent, near the lowest since the 1960s. For people with bachelor’s degrees and higher, the jobless rate is 2.1 percent.
Katz pointed out that the government also misses out on a cohort of newly minted statisticians and scientists when the government is shuttered or has a hiring freeze in place. While that alone might have little impact, it can add up as such episodes become regular practice.
Long-Run Erosion