World Statistics Day

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

Part of the U.S. Department of Labor, BLS is the principal federal agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, working conditions, and price changes in the economy. Its mission is to collect, analyze, and disseminate essential economic information to support public and private decisionmaking. As an independent statistical agency, BLS serves its diverse user communities by providing products and services that are objective, timely, accurate, and relevant.

Throughout the past 25 years, BLS has accomplished much, including the following:

• Launching the BLS website, which has become the primary source of BLS data and analysis
• Introducing Internet data collection and dissemination
• Introducing programs such as the American Time Use Survey and Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, as well as new data series such as Business Employment Dynamics
• Overhauling the Current Population Survey and Current Employment Statistics Survey to incorporate new collection methods and revised survey design
• Expanding the National Longitudinal Surveys with the 1997 youth cohort
• Revising compensation data to reflect the changing nature of pension programs and health benefits offered by employers
• Redesigning the Occupational Safety and Health Statistics programs for improved data on worker injuries, illnesses, and fatalities
• Converting the revision process for the Consumer Price Index from a periodic to a continuous updating of housing and geography weights and introducing hedonic techniques to adjust for quality change
• Establishing a Behavioral Science Research Laboratory to improve instrument design and data-dissemination tools
• Expanding the Producer Price Index Program to cover nearly 79% of measured output in service-providing industries
• Improving measurement of productivity data with revisions to labor- and business-sector surveys and the publication of multifactor productivity data
• Introducing probability sampling for several major national surveys, a major step to deal with bias reduction

Energy Information Administration (EIA)

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is the statistical and analytical agency within the U.S. Department of Energy. EIA collects, analyzes, and disseminates independent and impartial energy information to promote sound policymaking, efficient markets, and public understanding of energy and its interaction with the economy and environment.

EIA conducts a comprehensive data-collection program of more than 60 surveys that covers the full spectrum of energy sources, end uses, and energy flows; generates short- and long-term domestic and international energy projections; and performs informative energy analyses. Users have referred to EIA as the “gold standard” for energy information due to the following:

• EIA data are used by Congress, many federal and state agencies, and the private sector for projects such as assessing the adequacy of energy supplies, monitoring dependence on U.S. crude oil supply and imports, and tracking the amount of renewable fuels produced and consumed.
• EIA’s weekly natural gas storage data have been designated as one of the nation’s principal economic indicators.
• As an independent source of policy analysis, EIA prepares energy projections that are used to analyze different energy futures for the United States and has conducted many special analyses for Congress, the White House, and other federal agencies.
• EIA has become the dependable source of objective energy information for the major news media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and wire services such as Reuters. This achievement enables the EIA’s information to be seen more widely and used by the general public.
• The EIA’s award-winning Energy Kids web page provides educational information, activities, and lessons for students and teachers. Several products, including Energy Explained and Energy in Brief, are written in plain language for nontechnical audiences.
• Year after year, 90% or more of the customers who respond to the EIA’s agency-wide survey say they are satisfied or very satisfied with the quality of EIA’s information.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Reflecting the spirit of World Statistics Day, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has placed greater emphasis on displaying timely and accurate data for public use. While the EPA is primarily a regulatory agency, it acquires and uses considerable amounts of data and information to satisfy its decision processes. In recognition of this vast amount of information, EPA formed the Office of Environmental Information in 1999. The office has grown as more data and tools are developed and the public’s thirst for environmental information increases.

Since most of EPA’s data are considered “administrative data,” considerable efforts are made to provide ample metadata to describe the information so users can use the data appropriately.

One specific example of EPA’s commitment to ensure that the public has not only access, but also useful tools to employ in accessing data, is the popular Toxic Release Inventory. EPA releases the annual data along with no fewer than five freely available analysis tools of varying sophistication.

EPA uses data internally in its decisionmaking and enforcement roles. It strives for science-based decisions that require accurate, applicable, representative data—whether through appropriate statistical sampling or required reporting. In its 40-year history, EPA’s achievements using data include cleaning up 67% of contaminated Superfund sites, mandating new cars that are 98% cleaner, vastly increasing the number of Americans receiving clean drinking water to 92%, eliminating such toxic substances as lead in gasoline, and cleaning more than 2,000 previously impaired water bodies.

Economic Research Service (ERS)

The Economic Research Service is a premier source of data and research on economic and policy issues involving food, farming, natural resources, and rural development. Core projects gauge the economic health and performance of the U.S. agricultural sector, study farming’s relationship to the environment, estimate domestic and global food insecurity, analyze consumer food choices and dietary outcomes, and monitor the indicators of rural well-being. ERS is one of 14 principal U.S. statistical agencies.

ERS research findings, market information, and statistical indicators inform policymakers, industry groups, researchers, and the public. Since its establishment in 1961, ERS has produced data and analysis that have had an impact on the following issues:

Childhood Obesity. At the launch of First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative to reduce childhood obesity, ERS produced the Food Environment Atlas, which is used to assess the socioeconomic factors potentially related to obesity.

Food Safety. Research on the social cost of food-borne illness was instrumental in implementing new approaches to strengthen the food inspection system.

Climate Change. Climate change will affect crop and livestock yields worldwide. ERS examines opportunities and impediments to both farmer and government participation in markets for ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration.

Lagging Rural Economies. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided funds for speeding the introduction of broadband Internet service in lagging rural areas. ERS research was used to assess broadband service in and to target funding to those areas.

Global Food Insecurity. ERS estimates that 882 million people in 70 developing countries are food insecure. ERS’s research helps USAID and the U.S. Department of State target those countries most in need of food aid.

Food Deserts. Many urban neighborhoods lack ready access to healthy, nutritious foods. ERS’s research identifies the prevalence, causes, and consequences (economic and health) of food deserts.