This article originally appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of The Information Advisor's Guide to Internet Research. Learn more at informationadvisor.com.
What is the status of the official data published by U.S. federal statistical agencies? As the current administration continues its disassembling of huge swaths of the federal government, not only are the workers and services gone, so of course is much of the data generated by those employees. And federal statistical data and datasets, whether census data or statistics on the economy, health, education, or other critical public matters, are what librarians and information professionals rely upon to answer patron questions and perform research and analysis for internal, data-driven projects.
There are many dimensions to this problem. There is the data that is already gone or likely to be removed shortly. There are significant definitional changes that will impact the meaning of the information that will be at variance with past practices. And finally, there are the changes driven by the “anti-woke” social and cultural movement; these relate most significantly to removal or weakening of measurements, discussions, or programming that relates to race and gender, as well as those pertaining to climate change. This type of targeting spans many agencies and can take different forms. For example, on Feb. 5, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) removed EJSCREEN, an environmental justice mapping and screening tool, and several related webpages.
This article is a roundup of where these cuts and significant changes are happening and offers alternatives to locate datasets and statistical data that are no longer available.
The Federal Statistical System
There are more than 125 agencies/units that produce official statistics. For these 13 agencies, generating data and statistics is, in fact, each organization’s primary job:
- Bureau of Economic Analysis, Department of Commerce
- Bureau of Justice Statistics, Department of Justice
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor
- Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Department of Transportation
- U.S. Census Bureau, Department of Commerce
- Economic Research Service, Department of Agriculture
- Energy Information Administration, Department of Energy
- National Agricultural Statistics Service, Department of Agriculture
- National Center for Education Statistics, Department of Education
- National Center for Health Statistics, Department of Health and Human Services
- National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, National Science Foundation
- Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, Social Security Administration
- Statistics of Income Division, Department of the Treasury
- Microeconomic Surveys Unit, Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve System
- Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Department of Health and Human Services
- National Animal Health Monitoring System, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Department of Agriculture
Much of the data from these and other statistical agencies is available on the government’s Data.gov site (see Figure 1). 
High-Profile/High-Impact Statistical Agencies
While all of the federal statistical agencies can generate valuable and sought-after data, certain ones are particularly important for researchers. These have a major impact on decision making by policymakers in vital areas such as business, demographics, health, education, energy and other public matter areas. Here is a sampling of where some of those agencies’ data collection and reporting have been impacted or is expected to be soon.
Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
The BEA has long been a standard go-to agency for a wide range of business and market research. These are among the most impactful recent changes to its ability to continue to produce quantity and quality of data:
- March 2—Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that he wanted government spending stripped from inclusion as part of the gross domestic product (GDP). According to the Congressional Budget Office, public spending was about a quarter of U.S. GDP in the government’s latest fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, 2024.
- Feb. 28—Secretary Lutnick disbanded two expert committees that advised the government on improving economic statistics. One of these panels, the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, assisted with inflation and employment and GDP data, raising worries that the elimination of these committees will impact the quality of data. The committee, which had existed for about 20 years, was composed of academics, private-sector economists, and data scientists and focused on how to continually improve economic data not only for the BEA but for the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as well. The other group, the BEA Advisory Committee, advised the director of BEA on the development and improvement of BEA’s national, regional, industry, and international economic accounts, including new and rapidly growing economic activities arising from innovative and advancing technologies.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
The BLS is another go-to federal statistical site for business research with official statistics on employment, career trends, and other related measures of the economy:
- March 19—The BLS Technical Advisory Committee and the Data Users Advisory Committee was disbanded.
Department of Education: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
According to its webpage, the NCES, a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, is the statistical center of the U.S. Department of Education and the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S. and other nations. NCES fulfills a congressional mandate to collect, collate, analyze, and report complete statistics on the condition and progress of American education; conduct and publish reports; and review and report on education activities internationally. NCES oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the most comprehensive longitudinal catalogue of student achievement data in the U.S. (See Figure 2).
- March 11—Elimination of virtually all staff at NCES.
- February 2025—Termination of $881 million worth of about 170 third-party contracts within its research division. Contractors had to instantly halt whatever research and work they were currently engaged in.
- February 2025—These above-listed cuts will also likely result in the cancellation of the NAEP Nation’s Report Card program that measures student achievement in the nation in key subjects such as math and English.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
HHS researches and publishes the official statistics on births, deaths, diseases, healthcare spending, the health profession workforce, and much more:
- April 1—All 17 employees at SAMHSA, which manages the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, were laid off.
- Jan. 30—Based on compliance with Executive Order 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, specific discussions or terms from research data and publications that included the word “gender” or “transgender” were removed. This includes the use of these terms in health-related surveys. It is estimated that more than 1,000 pages from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were removed, including the withdrawal of manuscript submissions from scientific journals to remove the words. Among the datasets removed as part of the new regulations have been the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey and the Atlas Plus HIV surveillance tool. In addition, no race or ethnicity data will be utilized in social indicators such as the Social Vulnerability Index and the Environmental Justice Index.
Climate Change References
In the case of climate change, the scrutiny of terminology and data deletion has been unpredictable, as removal of terms varies and appears to be based on context; furthermore, removal actions are happening at multiple agencies. Websites where references to climate change have been deleted include the Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy, the EPA, the Department of State, and the White House.
Here are some of the most significant changes so far in 2025:
- In a March 12 news release, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said, “Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more.”
- In February, a coalition of organic farmers that relied on climate data for planning purposes sued the Department of Agriculture after it removed sections on climate change from its website. According to the lawsuit, the deleted data included datasets, interactive tools, and funding information to help farmers prepare for how climate changes will likely impact their activities.
- On Jan. 30, the EPA was required to take down a wide range of pages that focused on climate change. “Climate change” was also removed as one of the navigation bar options.
Again, not all references to climate change have been deleted on federal pages. Certain articles, links, and discussions remain. The problem problem, of course, is that it is not easy to know what is “not there” anymore or what will remain.
What about the U.S. Bureau of the Census? Much of the current concern is focusing on the 2030 U.S. Census, not only what kinds of staffing and expertise the bureau will have to properly conduct it, but also what kinds of questions will be permitted. On the former point, there are questions as to whether the U.S. Census will be able to effectively conduct its first test operations scheduled for 2026, as panels that had been giving scientific advice were disbanded (as noted in the discussion of the BEA), and there is now a hiring freeze. With thousands of temporary workers needed for the test, Meeta Anand, senior program director of census and data equity at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, has stated that “the hiring freeze could derail efforts to improve the counts of people of color, young children and other historically undercounted populations.” And she added, “Erasing data does not erase populations.”
On the latter point, there will likely be removal of or major changes to questions that document economic, social, and health disparities; citizenship questions; and anything related to LGBTQ+ and gender. A possible preview into how the U.S. Census might change can be found by consulting the Project 2025 chapter on the Census.
While these agencies represent the highest-profile examples of removed or radically transformed data collection and availability as well as policy changes, they are not the only ones impacted by layoffs, data removal directives, and revised policies. Others include the Social Security Administration (SSA), where the Office of Research Evaluation and Statistics, the federal statistical agency for the SSA (see Figure 3),
has had a reduction in staff from about 80 to 40. And, according to a Feb. 13, 2025, article in Bloomberg Law, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it would be cutting about half of its workforce, targetting those in offices that that enforce civil rights laws, compile data about the housing market, and pay to rebuild communities after disasters. Finally, with the elimination of USAID, its accompanying health survey program, the Demographic and Health Surveys, which looks at population, health, HIV, and nutrition in more than 90 countries, is currently “on pause.”
Other examples of cutbacks include this announcement by the Pentagon on March 7: “The Office of the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) is scrapping its social science research portfolio.” And the administration is also reportedly planning to lay off 500 probationary employees in the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which includes those at the AI Safety Institute and its program that publishes measurement data crucial for advanced research in areas such as astrophysics, nuclear fusion, and semiconductors.
Keeping Up With the Changes
As sets of data are removed and policy changes continue to come quickly, it is important to have resources to keep track of data that was once available but can now no longer be updated or accessible. A section of the website of the American Statistical Association (AMSTAT), The Nation’s Data at Risk, Year Two: Ongoing Monitoring, keeps track for the public. At the time of this writing (April 9, 2025), the site listed the following as the latest data and program removals:
- April 7—The annual conference of the federal Committee on Statistical Methodology for 2025 was cancelled.
- April 1—As already mentioned, the 17-member team at SAMHSA, which manages the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, was laid off on April 1. The team was part of the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, which is recognized as a statistical unit by the Office of Management and Budget. This designation grants the unit special protections, including safeguarding the privacy of survey respondents, among other authorities.
- March 17—The contract for the National Academies’ CNSTAT consensus study to help the Office of Homeland Security Statistics achieve its broadened responsibilities pursuant to the Evidence Act was “terminated for convenience.”
- March 4—The Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, BEA Advisory Committee, Census Scientific Advisory Committee, National Advisory Committee, and the 2030 Census Advisory Committee were terminated. This happened 4 days after the planned annual meetings for these committees were cancelled.
- February 23—The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database was ended
(AMSTAT also solicits updates from researchers of all types to alert the organization of any discontinuation or disappearance of sought-after federal data.)
Responses and Solutions
As has happened in the past when there were concerns about deleted climate and other data, a variety of advocacy- and information-oriented groups have ramped up existing efforts or emerged to step in to collect and archive data at risk of being disappeared. We have come across several that appear to be most useful for a wide range of researchers. These are among the major organizations involved in these efforts:
- The Public Environmental Data Partners—This is a volunteer coalition of several environmental, justice, and policy organizations; researchers across several universities, archivists, and students who rely on federal datasets and tools to support critical research, advocacy, policy, and litigation and are committed to preserving and providing public access to federal environmental data. The organization archives data that can be viewed on its website.
- Source Cooperative—Source Cooperative is a data publishing platform that has captured more than 11,000 webpages and countless datasets from federal agencies.
- Data Rescue Mission—Social Explorer is an online tool that allows one to explore and visualize a variety of demographic, health, and economic data in geographical and table formats. Its Data Rescue Mission initiative preserves disappearing datasets and provides tools for users to analyze and visualize trends.
- The End of Term Web Archive—This project has been active since 2008 and captures federal government websites in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches of the government that were at risk of changing or disappearing altogether during government transitions.
- Data Rescue Project—The Data Rescue Project maintains, saves, and makes available data that is likely to be cancelled or withdrawn from public access. (See Figure 4.)
Its excellent listing and description of other efforts underway from a wide range of initiatives and organizations is available on its website. - Internet Archive has a collection, created on Jan. 31, 2025, that lists all of the datasets that were removed before Jan. 28 on the CDC’s website and may be directly downloaded. (Thanks to librarian Mollie Brumbaugh for this lead.)
- PolicyMap—According to one business librarian we heard from, PolicyMap has promised to provide perpetual access to removed datasets for data visualization and to export data as well.
Further Resources
AMSTAT
The AMSTAT project Assessing the Health of the Principal Federal Statistical Agencies monitors the quality, accessibility, and changes to data infrastructures. This project evaluates federal agencies’ ability to produce trusted quality statistics as well as their agility, accountability, and trustworthiness. Rather than waiting for its scheduled 2025 report, AMSTAT has decided to continuously publish information on how data collection and infrastructures are evolving.
Library Initiatives
Here are a few library-generated resources to be aware of:
