Congress is trying to make it harder to know how the economy is doing

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/14/congress-is-trying-to-make-it-harder-to-know-how-the-economy-is-doing/

Confusion about today’s labor market, anxiety about the future of jobs, a rapidly evolving economy and so many other reasons make now exactly the wrong time to diminish the government’s ability to collect and construct labor market data. But that is exactly what is happening, and may continue to happen.
Jonathan Schwabish at the Urban Institute catalogues the damage: In 2013, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the principal agency charged with producing information on the labor market, received $41 million less from Congress than the president requested. Statistics on mass layoffs — an important source of information about the behavior of businesses facing sharp reductions in demand — were eliminated. In 2014, facing a gap of nearly $22 million, BLS pulled back on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, a vital pillar supporting our ability to know detailed information on how many jobs and businesses the economy is supporting and how much workers are earning. The same year, BLS continued to produce information on import and export prices — from which we know how the United States is performing in international markets — by the skin of its teeth.