A recent change in how a federal agency gathers data in Buffalo may soon change how accurately the region is represented economically. The Consumer Price Index is a measure that analyzes changes in what American consumers pay for everyday items. That report is generated using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The next CPI is slated to be released tomorrow morning; however, in June, the BLS announced they were suspending personal CPI data collection entirely in the Nickel City. In its place, a simulation model trained with historical data of the region will give Buffalo a seat at the table when it comes to cost-of-living adjustments, inflation shifts, and changes in housing rates.
Russell Weaver is the Research Director of Cornell University’s School of Industrial Labor Relations’ Buffalo Co-Lab. He says the reconstruction of the BLS data collection could create improper representation.
“You're losing some information content, right? There's information loss in that process,” Weaver said. “A region like Buffalo, which is the second largest class B or C metropolitan region in the Northeast BLS sector, that's a big place to just say that we're not going to collect data from there any longer. So, representation is going to be an issue.”
In the June notice that suspended the original data collection method, the Bureau noted that “Reductions are made when current resources can no longer support the collection effort.” Weaver said that the downsizing in Buffalo operations is part of a national trend.
“I do want to say explicitly that BLS has amazing statisticians and great social scientists on staff. Their models have historically been very good,” Weaver said. “I know that the folks there are going to try to make adjustments going forward, but I do think this is a resource issue, and we as a nation are not investing as heavily into this data collection as we should to make our best and most informed decisions.”
Weaver noted that tomorrow's local report won’t look drastically different than previous reports, but changes could eventually become apparent.
