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Keep Women’s Data  Groups Tell BLS

March 14, 2005

A recent decision by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to discontinue gathering information on women in its monthly payroll survey in favor of other new data has caused an uproar among elected officials, organized labor and women’s groups.

Less than three months after the bureau announced its intention to stop asking employers how many women workers they have, thousands of public comments running 9 to 1 against the proposal have flooded in.

BLS data is widely used to track economic,
wage and demographic shifts.

"Without information on gender for these data, important questions regarding women’s employment and job loss across business cycles will be impossible to answer," Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) President Heidi Hartmann told the Bureau of National Affairs Daily Labor Report. She noted that her organization uses payroll survey data on several research projects, including a recent analysis on job losses and job gains by industry following the 2001 recession

At issue is a plan proposed last summer to modify the monthly payroll employment survey of data from 280,000 businesses to collect more information on workers and earnings. Part of the Current Employment Statistics program, the data are used by the BLS to compile its monthly report on the nation’s employment picture. But the agency decided the additional survey questions would make the form too long and announced it would stop asking companies how many women they employ. More than 60 members of the House of Representatives and 30 senators sent letters of protest to the BLS, urging them to reconsider.

The gender series is a minor piece of the questionnaire, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, among others argued, and any benefit from removing the question "is miniscule compared to the significant loss caused by the elimination of the data series."

The National Organization for Women and others called the effort the latest example of a concerted political trend. They cited an April 2004 IWPR report that highlights a "disturbing pattern of vital information important to women and girls’ lives disappearing from federal government web sites, reluctance on the government’s part to support and sustain offices dedicated to addressing the specific needs of women and the government’s willingness to undervalue and tamper with key research affecting women’s lives."

Others who have protested the BLS proposal include the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the American Civil Liberties Union and the AFL-CIO.

Bureau of Labor Statistics Home Page

The United States Department of Labor Home Page, Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao