C2ER calling on Congress to restore, modernize BLS budget
C2ER has learned that the Senate and House are developing appropriations proposals that must ready in the next few weeks. To that end, C2ER will be coordinating outreach to both committees, as well as to key individual members of each, calling on the House and Senate to increase the total Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) budget request to $631.4 million.
This would include the following proposals:
- supporting president’s proposals to provide funding for annual Current Population Survey (CPS) supplements to better monitor labor market changes and adapt the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) to support the development of a supplemental poverty measure ($4.1 million)
- restoring the export price and quarterly census of employment and wages cuts resulting from sequestration and recent budget compromises ($9.3 M);
- restoring Current Employment Survey (CES) funding to 2010 levels to provide BLS with the resources to enhance data quality and reduce employer response burden by encouraging businesses to voluntary provide information through electronic data interchange ($7 M, based in part on FY 2011 budget proposal cut, page 30 — $5 M would restore the cut, plus $2 M to states to support quality control); and,
- modernizing BLS programs to provide time series data for the Occupational Employment Survey as well as test ways to use big data to enhance data quality and industry/geographic detail for BLS programs ($5 M, based in part on FY 2011 budget proposal, page 16, first bullet under “Cost Model”).
This is $21.3 million above the President’s FY2015 request and would provide about $25.4 million in resources to restore and modernize BLS, which is $21.3 million above the President’s request.
We expect that outreach to Congress must happen by March 28. Watch for an alert and language to send your representative shortly. If you are interested in contributing to advocacy work, please contact us at info@crec.net.
Updated 3-25-14