Six federal statistical agencies have lost at least a third of their staff

All 13 principal federal statistical agencies have lost staff since the start of the Trump administration. Six of them shed at least a third of their people, and two lost more than two thirds, according to a midyear report from the American Statistical Association covered by Government Executive.

The U.S. Census Bureau is one of the agencies affected, and it's been running under acting leadership for about a year and a half while it prepares the 2030 count.

What the report found

The ASA warns that the cuts and the leadership vacancies together "put the agencies in a weakened and vulnerable position to meet rigorous production schedules" and to keep up with "producing relevant, timely, and accurate statistics for decisionmakers and the public."

Hiring has restarted at seven agencies, but the report says recruitment "has barely begun to offset earlier losses and does not immediately address the loss of expertise and experience that occurred in last year's downsizing." That gap between headcount and know-how is the part that doesn't fix itself with a job posting.

Steve Pierson, director of science policy at the ASA, told Government Executive that "everyone is doing more these days because of these cuts."

"The loss of staff is not just the numbers. It's the expertise, it's the mentorship," Pierson said. "You lose that, and it does affect the long-term productivity, as well as possibly the production of these reports."

Where the deepest cuts landed

Two agencies stand out. The National Agricultural Statistics Service has lost nearly 40 percent of its staff since 2024, and more attrition is expected as the Agriculture Department relocates positions. Employees had until July 8 to decide whether to move to St. Louis or a regional office, and those who accepted are due to report by September 21.

The Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics went from about 100 employees to four last year as part of plans to dismantle the department. It's back up to roughly a dozen full-time staff.

Claire McKay Bowen, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who leads its data governance and privacy team, put the capacity problem this way: "Federal statistics are the eggs that go into cake that we like to eat, and the capacity aspect is the fact that we're not having enough bakers now at this point."

The leadership gaps

Vacancies at the top have lasted a long time in several places. The Bureau of Justice Statistics hasn't had a permanent director in three years. About a third of leadership positions at the Bureau of Labor Statistics are vacant. And the Census Bureau has been under acting leadership for roughly 18 months.

Bowen said that uncertainty stalls planning. "Nobody likes uncertainty, at the end of the day. Not knowing who is the leader, or what their priorities are, people are going to be hesitant to commit to making certain changes or proposals," she said. She added that many remaining officials are covering several roles at once, "wearing three, four, five hats, which is not great."

That detail lines up with something we reported separately. When the Commerce Department banned noise infusion in Census and BEA data products in June, the Chief Scientist post that would normally lead the technical response was sitting empty. Two unrelated stories, same vacancy problem, which is covered in our piece on the order banning the privacy method behind detailed census data.

Is there enough people left to produce the numbers on schedule?

Last summer the president fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a monthly jobs report showed hiring had slowed, which raised questions about the independence of the agencies.

Pierson drew a clear line on the data itself. "We have full confidence that the products being released by the federal statistical agencies have not been improperly influenced or manipulated by this administration. It's too hard to do," he said, adding that the processes and the civil servants running them would surface any attempt.

So the concern in this report isn't fabricated numbers. It's whether there are enough people left to produce them on schedule and at the level of detail users expect. An earlier ASA report found that staffing and spending cuts had already led to some public datasets being delayed, suspended, or canceled outright.

Why it matters

Nearly everything on this site comes from the agencies described in that report, mostly the Census Bureau. Production schedules, dataset detail, and whether a release lands on time are the difference between a current statistic and a stale one, and the 2030 census is being planned right now by an agency without a permanent director.

For related coverage, see our reporting on the 2030 contracting buildout, the proposed changes to residence rules and demographic questions, and the case for making the 2030 count more accurate. For how the main survey behind our data works, see what the American Community Survey is.

Sources

Reporting and quotes are from Government Executive (July 2026). The underlying documents are the American Statistical Association's midyear update on the health of federal statistical agencies and its earlier report, The Nation's Data at Risk.