The big story here is of an agency of dedicated statisticians and public servants working tirelessly to improve economic data in a climate of budgetary cuts to data collection. They have been very innovative in meeting that mandate. But we should also just fund our economic infrastructure.

Goodbye summer

Any economists on here who cen speak about experiences in their (non-US) country with the politicization of official statistics? DM me. #EconSky

Why do the jobs numbers get revised? our markets and policymakers want data NOW but employer data dribbles in over months 1st estimate is based on the 75% of employers who respond promptly Updates occur as more data rolls in: 95% response rate by final revision 1/N www.bls.gov/opub/btn/vol...

Unquestionably the most dangerous and corrupt attack on the independence of US economic data in American history. Trump is firing the head of the BLS, a longtime civil servant confirmed 86-8 by the Senate, simply because the job numbers came in below his expectations today

Everyone who helps the creation of meaningful accurate data for the good of the public: I admire your service and appreciate you ❤️🧡🤍🩷❤️

🚨 Should (macro) investors should care about ICE raids? on.ft.com/4f34KQz

Please read this @khoureld.bsky.social story about the consequences of USAID cuts. Children are dying from starvation on the streets of Sudan — and the food that could save them, already paid for by our government, is languishing in U.S. warehouses. (No paywall)

What an important contribution from UMD (Go Terps!) alum @anamibanez.bsky.social and co-authors. Programs that integrate refugees work and are fiscally more efficient for host governments as evidenced in Colombia. #EconSky check out great paper: academic.oup.com/jeea/article...

Check out some of my new work on H-2B workers and firms during the pandemic. Thanks to @upjohninstitute.bsky.social and @bradhershbein.bsky.social for their support!

Economists love when random variation makes it possible to measure causal impacts. I wrote a CRS 2-page summary of three studies that use random variation in application processing to measure the impact of the H-2B visa program on employers and employees: www.congress.gov/crs-product/...

The reason why this article is so bad is that the only argument it marshals against international students is a fallacy. There isn’t a fixed set of slots for people to compete for, given by nature. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/o...

New @nber.org working paper "Targeted Education Transfers Reduced Long-Run and Intergenerational Ethnic Inequality in Chile" with #PatrickMcEwan & #DavidTorresIrribarra. Title summarizes it. More details: www.nber.org/papers/w33798

My cake on a face!

How many farmworkers in the US have no work authorization? I've published a guestimate in my new CRS 2-pager, "Work Authorization Among Hired Agricultural Workers," www.congress.gov/crs-product/... (One common estimate is 42%. That estimate doesn't include H-2A workers in the denominator.)

Please highlight this story. ICE stormed into the wrong house, trashed the place, and made women/girls stand outside in the rain in their underwear. ICE also stole phones, laptops, and cash savings from the family, who moved to OKC two weeks ago. kfor.com/news/local/w...

This morning ICE deported 3 more US citizen children held incommunicado. The families were disappeared and isolated without legal access; one child with cancer deported without medication and pregnant mother deported as well www.aclu.org/press-releas...

Almost every line of this story would have been simply unbelievable a few months ago: —Pioneering cancer researcher; —*Arrested* at airport in Boston; —Now indefinite ICE detention in Louisiana; —"Crime": not declaring some frog-embryo samples for research. Read it. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Unprecedented return migration from the US has contributed to Mexico's economic development in recent decades. In the March issue, by José R. Bucheli and Matías Fontenla zurl.co/h2IZ1

Despite what you’ve probably heard, Trump’s immigration agenda isn’t actually popular. While Americans sometimes approve of “the way he is handling immigration” in abstract, they are very negative on the details. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/trumps-imm...

Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions - rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking steps to make sure students can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect. Let’s hope others follow suit.

bloomberg: ~90% of deported migrants to el salvador had no criminal record

Here is the situation if I’m understanding it correctly: 1. They are deporting lawful immigrants erroneously to prisons overseas 2. They are claiming no recourse to return these individuals 3. They say they are open to deporting citizens in the same way

No, absolutely not. I do not think we should be reading that into anything. The primary reason the government does not want him back is the much simpler explanation: they don't want to admit any mistakes, his very presence would be a huge embarrassment to them, and he'll tell tales about CECOT.

If it weren't for the tariffs, this would be one of the biggest stories right now.

A remedial education program in India worked well when teachers were given strict implementation guidelines. It worked just as well when teachers had discretion to adapt. www.nber.org/papers/w33242 by Beg, @annefitz13.bsky.social, @jkerwin.bsky.social, @profalucas.bsky.social, & @kwrahman.com

this is a great example of trying to rationalize a fundamentally irrational decision. you’ll notice that at no point does cass ever articulate what the american public is supposed to get out of the deal here. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/o...

60 Minutes found no criminal record for 75% of the Venezuelan migrants the U.S. sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador. https://cbsn.ws/4lC4Vp5

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are disrupting a breakthrough cancer treatment so they can fund tax cuts for billionaires. Tell your friends.

When home heating is less affordable, more people die each winter. That's what our analysis found for a period when LIHEAP was in place. Without LIHEAP, the effect would presumably much larger. Ungated copy of the study here: bit.ly/2JrJfxR

A Maryland man who was in the U.S. legally was deported to El Salvador and imprisoned there because of an “administrative error,” Trump administration officials said in a court filing on Monday. The man has lived in the U.S. since 2019 and his wife and 5-year-old child are both U.S. citizens.

FT ed board weighs in on the White House war on federal statistics. I hope more media outlets do as well. Still waiting for more market participants who rely on these critical data series to speak up. www.ft.com/content/a2cb...

Before becoming parents, men and women increasingly move to higher-paying employers and to higher-paying roles with current employers. After childbirth, men stay on this upward path while women move to lower-paying employers, the research finds.

NEW: Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.)& Trump's former NatSec Advisor Matt Pottinger make the case that funding for scientific R&D isn't a gift to academia. It's vital to U.S. national security, as China, the United States' primary strategic adversary, is already investing heavily in R&D. shorturl.at/PgUK0

NEW: @aclu.org obtained ICE's "Alien Enemies Act Validation Guide," confirming all it takes to be sent to rot in prison in El Salvador is being Venezuelan and 1) having a tattoo an ICE officer says is a "gang tattoo" and 2) displaying "logos," "symbols" or clothes an ICE officer says are gang signs.

Trump has cut the NIH budget by more than half in defiance of Congressionally mandated appropriations for the agency. No comparison historically, not even the Great Recession. This is clearly not legal and Congress needs to address it.

NEW! The Trump administration appears to have sent a married father with NO CRIMINAL RECORD in any country to rot in a prison in El Salvador because of a PAPERWORK ERROR. This man doesn’t even have tattoos! But his paperwork has two different peoples’ ID numbers listed and the wrong last name!

There’s a certain form of paternalism out there that refuses to acknowledge this fact. This, of course, isn’t just about personal income. It’s also about the sorts of social and physical “civic goods” that high-income affords societies.

This ridiculous deflection is such a non sequitur. Due process is what distinguishes us as a people from the monsters who do commit heinous crimes. If there’s no due process, we’re a society that can just lynch people on an accusation, with no need to get it right.

A pie graph worth keeping in mind as the NIH budget plummets jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... for 356 new FDA drugs approved

Just the beginning of real-world consequences to Trump scientific funding cuts: “The early results — a scientific first — were published Wednesday even as study participants worried that politics could cut their access to a possible lifeline.”

From 2010 to 2016 (latest data I have ), NIH research contributed to EVERY drug approved by the FDA

International students don’t take opportunities from American students. They create them. Mingyu Chen (PhD @princetonecon.bsky.social now@Amazon) built a powerful tool showing exactly how much international students contribute by state, degree type, & over time. Please share this tool far & wide!

Mississippi State Univ. is hiring a tenure-track Econ Assistant Prof w/ August start! Open field; pref. for applied micro & teaching PhD Micro I & II (Micro II this fall). Apply: MSU site & www.aeaweb.org/joe/listing.php?JOE_ID=2025-01_111475768 Please repost—it's an off-cycle search. Thanks!

In addition to being morally wrong this is also just plain old wrong as shown by research by @kevinshih.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This cure for sickle cell anemia was made possible by NIH-funded research to turn the gene for fetal hemoglobin back on. It was done predominantly by NIH researchers, including intramural researchers on the NIH campus. irp.nih.gov/catalyst/33/...

The New York Times is the first to put out comprehensive estimates on the cost of a year without U.S.A.I.D. and they’re higher than I thought: - 1.65 million deaths from AIDS - 500,000 from lack of vaccines - 550,000 from lack of food aid - 290,000 from malaria - 310,000 from TB