The shutdown is cutting off data you paid for
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Among the casualties of the current government shutdown: Simple access to some key taxpayer-funded government data.
Why it matters: You may not need to look up where America's oldest residents live or how much federal revenue K-12 schools get.
- But it's your right as an American taxpayer to get those numbers, if you want them. After all, you paid to collect them.
- More than that, government data measures our progress on key issues, drives major business and investment decisions, determines the size of Social Security checks — and gives us a shared, trusted quantitative reality.
Driving the news: Data.census.gov, the easiest-to-use portal for accessing U.S. Census Bureau data, is broken as of Wednesday morning.
- "Due to the lapse of federal funding, this website is not being updated," reads a banner atop the page. "Any inquiries submitted via data.census.gov will not be answered until appropriations are enacted."
- At least some Census data appears accessible through other means, including through an API — but that requires some technical skill.
A similar message appears on the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) site.
- "This website is currently not being updated due to the suspension of Federal government services," it reads.
- "The last update to the site was Wednesday, October 1, 2025. Updates to the site will start again when the Federal government resumes operations."
The big picture: The issues come amid the Trump administration's broader war on government data.
- Its most notable previous salvo was President Trump's sudden firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer in August, following big downward revisions in previous job growth estimates.
- That move made "clear that any federal data collector who delivers unwelcome news could lose their job in an instant," Axios' Neil Irwin wrote at the time — and sent the business and financial worlds into a panic over the veracity of key government data moving forward.
Between the lines: It's unclear whether disabling easy access to existing Census data was an intentional choice by the Trump administration.
- The Census Bureau did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment.
- Several federal data collection efforts have already been ended: The USDA is no longer publishing an annual food security report, for example, and the Trump administration is reportedly targeting the Labor Department's Women's Bureau, which tracks stats around women's employment.
- Trump suggested this week that he'd use the shutdown as cover to shrink the federal government and programs.
What's next: If the shutdown continues, BLS won't publish its key monthly jobs report due out this Friday.
- "That means businesses and policymakers will be left guessing about the strength of the labor market at a time when the U.S. economy appears to be slowing," NPR reports.
- Other key BLS data, like the next Consumer Price Index report, could also be delayed. That's used both to measure inflation and set the size of seniors' Social Security checks.
The bottom line: Data may not seem like the biggest deal during a shutdown that leaves hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed and many others working without regular paychecks, disrupts key government benefits, and more.
- But America runs on numbers — sorry, Dunkin' — and it's our right to have the data we paid for.
