Some of America's Most Important Economic Data Is Decaying
Episode publishedPodcast: Odd LotsOdd Lots
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Jill Weisenthal. And
I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy, I've said this a bunch
of times, and we've sort of danced around this issue, on the podcast before. But I've said this a bunch of times. I'm sort of fascinated by the degree to which we sort of take numbers on the screen for granted. Like, you know, we look at a price of a stock and it exists on the screen. It's like, where did that come from? How did that get there? Or, like, the first Friday of the month, the jobs data flashes on the screen, and we just start talking about what the data said, what the unemployment rate was, etcetera. But we don't really talk enough about, like, what had to happen behind the scenes
Right. I find this really interesting as well because, obviously, there's the data collection portion of this. Like Yeah. You have to go out and talk to people for certain surveys, certain data points, but also there are so many qualitative and subjective adjustments that you can make to that data. So for instance, with CPI, I didn't know that CPI weightings are, like, different depending on what city you're in. Oh, interesting. Instance, like, food at home could matter a lot more in, I don't know, Minneapolis compared to Chicago. It's really interesting. And there's also qualitative adjustmen
It's super interesting. And, like, I have a you know, this is the issue. We don't talk about data collection, but it's obviously some of the most interesting stuff there is because, of course, you know, things like food at home in one city should be different than another city if you really wanna collect a basket. And so it means that what you have is some of the most interesting economics work being done anywhere in a realm that virtually gets no attention. And when we talk about data collection, you know, you hear it a lot in politics. Right? Surveys have gotten you know, no one answers the
Yeah. So I have a bunch of thoughts on this. I'll just say talking about the economic data might be timely as well because we know that Trump doesn't really respect, I guess, a lot of official economic data, and he's also trying to cut back on costs or funding of a bunch of different government programs. So it's clear that, you know, entities like the Bureau of Labor Statistics could potentially be in the crosshairs here. But you're right. Response rates, lower response rates have been happening for a long time, and it's really easy to look up, like, just how bad things have gotten. If you loo
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