Count on Stats, the ASA’s public relations campaign aimed at raising public trust and confidence in government statistics, has been tracking the effect of COVID-19 on the federal statistical agencies and their reactions to it. The following is from its recent newsletter, complemented by material as we have become aware of it.

While all the principal federal statistical agencies have efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic, we highlight here several related to the economy, health, and transportation.

Some initiatives have been disrupted, and new ones have been launched to address the needs of the pandemic. These efforts demonstrate the responsiveness, creativity, adaptability, and collaborative approach of the federal statistical agencies.

Census Bureau

The decennial census staff has made numerous adjustments to manage the challenges of social distancing amid its crucial survey collection period. This includes temporary suspension of field data collection, longer self-response periods, and a request to Congress to extend the legal deadline for delivering decennial census data to the president and states by 120 days. 

Meanwhile, it has added the Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey in cooperation with several other federal statistical agencies to collect data about the effects of COVID-19, a weekly regional Business Formation Statistics series, and supplemental questions to five additional business surveys.

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

As business lockdowns and closures make it harder to gather information, COVID-19 poses a challenge to BLS data accuracy. Estimating inflation, for example, which can be hard to measure at the start of a recession under normal circumstances, will be challenged because of the normal practice of visiting stores for price checks. In alignment with social distancing, BLS has suspended all in-store visits.

Response rates will also suffer. The response rate to its March business survey was about nine percentage points lower than average. To inform COVID-19 effects on work and employment, the agency has added supplemental questions to the BLS Current Population Survey in cooperation with the Census Bureau and National Center for Health Statistics.

It is also proposing the reinstatement of its well-being module as a supplement to the American Time Use Survey to “collect information about how people experience their time, specifically how happy, tired, sad, stressed, and in pain they felt yesterday.”

Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)

BEA made adjustments to its wages and salaries estimates to reflect activity due to COVID-19 that was not yet captured in the usual source data. For details, see the BEA posting, “How Did BEA Adjust March 2020 Wages and Salaries to Account for the Effects of COVID-19?”.

National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)

In-person examinations for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data collection are paused, as well as some exploratory pilot programs. It’s anticipated this will reduce overall sample and response rates and delay the release of the data. The National Health Interview Survey, also conducted in person, is paused, with similar anticipated impacts.

In the meantime, NCHS is the primary provider of COVID-19 death data. A team is working on coding COVID-19 deaths for accurate reporting on the mortality impact of the virus, while other employees are updating diagnostic coding in the clinical setting.

The May NCHS newsletter also provided the following updates: “Many of NCHS staff are involved in the COVID response, either through front-line work with the broader CDC response or working from their homes to ensure data collection and standards are met in the COVID response. NCHS plans to add COVID-19 questions to many of our surveys and has contributed health-related questions to the Census Household Pulse Survey. NCHS is also rolling out a COVID-19 Research and Development Survey to test survey questions. And, an NHANES Mobile Examination Center truck is currently in use for mobile testing in Washington, DC.”

Economic Research Service (ERS)

On its COVID-19 media resources page, the Economic Research Service highlights its most recent economic outlook reports for various commodities.

Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS)

BTS is posting selected transportation measures that have raised its profile in the Department of Transportation and more widely, as reported in “The Coronavirus Has Turned This Unlikely Federal Agency into a Predictor of Economic Recovery”. The agency has also created a Monthly Transportation Statistics page with the latest data from across government and the transportation industry.

The Data Coalition further discusses these developments and the (mostly) private-sector COVID Impact Survey in a blog post titled, “Federal Government Takes Steps to Gather New Official Data on COVID Effects.”