There's no good replacement for government data
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Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios
There's a new fear among investors and CEOs: flying blind on investments without sufficient data on the economy's health.
Why it matters: The U.S. government produces some of the world's premiere economic data. The future of those indicators looks murkier than ever, with no private sector source readily available to replace them.
How it works: The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which President Trump wants to overhaul, produces crucial data on jobs and inflation.
- Other sources, including private sector employment data from payroll processor ADP, help shape the understanding of how the economy is performing. But nothing yet can replace traditional government data.
What they're saying: "At the end of the day all roads lead back to the government data," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, tells Axios. "If we don't have that data, we're going to be lost."
- Businesses, state and local governments, the Federal Reserve and beyond will substitute private data that might be less reliable and "make decisions that are are just plain wrong when it matters the most," Zandi said.
The intrigue: E.J. Antoni, President Trump's pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said those fears are the very reason why the agency should release its monthly jobs report less frequently.
- Along with the Trump administration, he's criticized the BLS for the data revisions in its unemployment report.
- "How on Earth are businesses supposed to plan — or how is the Fed supposed to conduct monetary policy — when they don't know how many jobs are being added or lost in our economy?" Antoni told Fox prior to his nomination.
- He suggested suspending the jobs report entirely, for an indefinite period of time, while the BLS revised its methods.
The other side: "Blaming the data because you get things wrong is bad. That's a bad forecaster," Joe Lavorgna, an economist who counsels Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, tells Axios.
- "Questioning the data when you get multiple standard deviation missed and biases in the data in one direction — people have the right to question that."
Threat level: The idea that the administration would release the jobs report less frequently (or not at all) is a big concern for companies and investors trying to understand the economy.
- No company can create nationally representative datasets without the government-produced benchmarks.
- Zandi warned about the potential that companies might pull back on data releases, for fear of attack from the administration.
- "I do wonder whether that might have some impact on the willingness and ability of private sector sources to do what they've been doing," Zandi said.
What to watch: There is insatiable appetite for more timely data that can track how Trump's sweeping economic changes are affecting jobs, prices and more.
- It is similar to the pandemic onset, when corporate data helped shed light on economic trends that government data was too slow to pick up.
For example: Tractor Supply, an agricultural retailer, relies on privately-produced consumer sentiment data — released by Morning Consult — to understand its customers, for questions like whether they could absorb tariff-related price increases.
- "We need to be able to take the external, governmental data that we've leaned on heavily for years, but be able to augment that with additional information for many of the reasons today that there's scrutiny on the governmental data," chief financial officer Kurt Barton tells Axios.
- He emphasized that private sector data alone would not be sufficient, however.
The bottom line: Flaws plaguing U.S. statistical agencies — falling survey response rates, budget cuts — pre-date Trump.
- But tossing that data aside will create far bigger headaches.
