While government data remains in limbo, for Slate, Lizzie O’Leary highlights the sectors that rely on public resources (all of them):
Government data is certainly not perfect, true. But the private sector relies heavily on government information. Economists Ellen Hughes-Cromwick and Julia Coronado wrote a 2019 paper published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives showing how a vast range of companies depend on U.S. government data to understand their customers and make decisions about how to run their businesses.
Let’s say that you run, oh, I don’t know, an electric car company. According to Hughes-Cromwick and Coronado’s work, you might use government reports on auto sales (the Bureau of Economic Analysis), consumer credit (the Fed), the consumer price index for new vehicles (BLS), the consumer price index for all items (BLS), disposable personal income (BEA), employment and unemployment (BLS), energy prices (BLS and the Energy Information Administration), the GDP (BEA), interest rates (the Fed), inventories (the census), regional income, prices, and consumer spending (BEA and the census). And that’s just for short-term decisionmaking purposes!
