The LMI Insider – December 2025

LMI Insider
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December 2025
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Welcome to LMI Insider –

A Publication of the Labor Market Information Institute
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Feature
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Thank You for a Great Year!
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Thank you all for another great year here at the LMI Institute. With your support we have had a successful year and are looking forward to what 2026 will bring. This year we set a record for attendance at the LMI/C2ER Conference hosted in Sacramento. We were able to have another in-person PMP summit, this time in Austin, TX. The Data User Roundtable series brought us together for a series of conversations ranging from how Community Colleges are using data to how AI is changing our work.
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Of course, this has been a challenging year for public data and those responsible for producing it. Significant changes in the federal government have impacted all our work, from early separations and furloughs reducing the capacity of BLS and other statistical agencies, to the recent shutdown preventing access to important data systems and delaying key releases. Still, we are confident that by working together and developing shared knowledge and resources we will be able to continue to provide the information that our data users need to make decisions related to workforce development, economic development, and education.
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Federal Updates
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Friends of the BLS Endorsement Letter
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The Friends of the BLS have sent a public endorsement letter to the Senate and House Appropriations Committees urging the committees to maintain agency funding at $714 million in FY 2026. The letter also expresses concerns about the ongoing federal hiring freeze. The BLS has lost almost 25% of its staff this year, many of whom were senior staff. With their departure the BLS lost invaluable institutional knowledge, and needs new talent, both to maintain operations, and to learn from the senior officials still left so that some chain of institutional knowledge can be passed down.
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American Statistical Association Annual Report
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The American Statistical Association just published its annual report titled The Nation’s Data At Risk. The report finds that there has been a “severe decline in the federal statistical agencies’ ability to meet their basic mission and be positioned to keep up with increasing information needs.”
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NEED Act Letter of Support
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On December 4th the New Essential Education Discoveries (NEED) Act was introduced in the House of Representatives. This bipartisan bill would establish a National Center for Advanced Development in Education (NCADE) at the Institute of Education Sciences, a branch of the Department of Education, and work to strengthen and modernize Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) which would improve the tracking of students’ progress through educational systems and into the workforce. A letter of support was organized by the Alliance for Learning Innovation and was signed by over 60 individuals and organizations.
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Government Shutdown and Data
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The BLS has published revised release dates for key data products. Because no survey data was collected in October, there will be fewer publicly available indexes published. The CPI, Employment Situation, JOLTS, Real Earnings, State Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, and State and Metro Employment and Unemployment are all affected.
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Upcoming Events, Trainings, and Webinars
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LMI Institute and C2ER Conference

June 17 – 20, 2026

Memphis, Tennessee
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Insider View – Be in the Know
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Credential Count Report
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Credential Engine has released its Counting Credentials 2025 report, the nation’s only comprehensive count of every type of credential in the U.S. This is the 5th edition of the report, following a fourth edition in 2022. The report identifies 1,850,034 unique credentials across seven categories from 134,491 providers, representing $2.34 trillion in annual education and training investment. This year’s companion piece, Counting Credentials, In Context, provides full context on how the credential ecosystem is shifting as digital credentialing becomes the norm.
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For LMI professionals, this report offers a clearer baseline for understanding credential supply, emerging trends, and the growing demand for skills transparency. The findings help illuminate where new opportunities exist to connect workers and employers through verified competencies, improving alignment between labor market data, training, and real-world hiring needs.
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Manufacturing Momentum Report
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The second Manufacturing Momentum Summit took place in August 2025. This Summit provided a venue for national, state, and local stakeholders to discuss the challenges in developing the domestic advanced manufacturing workforce and share their ideas and experiences in implementing potential solutions. A report synthesizing the sessions and discussions that took place during this meeting was just released.
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Local Lens
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Data at Work in Northern Virginia:

Navigating a Changing Economy Through Better Information
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Northern Virginia has long been one of the strongest labor markets in the United States, anchored by federal agencies, contracting firms, emerging technology employers, and a highly educated workforce that moves seamlessly across the Virginia-Maryland-D.C. metropolitan region. However, the region’s reliance on the federal government meant that this year’s layoffs of federal workers have had a significant impact on the economy. Amidst this economic disruption the two workforce boards that serve the region have relied on labor market information to understand employer needs, advise job seekers, and guide training investments. Yet the practical realities of small teams mean that accessing and analyzing foundational datasets from state and federal systems can be difficult. Time-consuming processes, inconsistent geographic boundaries, and limited staff bandwidth all hinder timely analysis.

Read how Northern Virginia’s workforce boards are navigating these challenges here!
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Have a workforce board you’d like to see featured? Contact us (jallison@crec.net).
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Featured Reports and Tools
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Maryland
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Maryland’s LMI office provides two explainer sheets to help data users better understand the data their office provides and how to use it. The first is Who We Are, which explains the job of the LMI shop, what reports they produce, and the surveys and data sets that they maintain. The second explainer sheet is an LMI Cheat Sheet which describes nine LMI products and surveys, including their uses and provides web links to them. These two sheets are great ways to help non-experts understand the key role that LMI shops play in providing critical economic data, and how stakeholders can use the data.
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Virginia
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Virginia recently completed an Economic Impact and Return on Investment Analysis on its registered apprenticeship program. This brief seven-page report demonstrates the benefits of investing in the apprenticeship program, both for the apprentices as well as the broader Virginia economy. The report concludes by proposing further opportunities to explore the role that apprenticeships play in the state’s economy.
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Does your state have a projections dashboard?

Share it with us! We’d love to see it and feature it in the monthly LMI Insider.
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We welcome your feedback on this edition, and for content suggestions in future editions, of The LMI Insider. Please direct comments, questions, or for more information on the LMI Institute to Marty Romitti, CREC Senior Vice President, at mromitti@crec.net
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To subscribe to the C2ER/LMI Weekly Updates click here
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