2014 Budget Enacted for Bureau of Labor Statistics

On Friday, January 17, 2014, President Obama signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014. The Act provides $592.2 million in funding to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the fiscal year (FY) 2014 that began October 1, 2013. This funding level is $21.6 million below the FY 2014 President’s Budget. In order to achieve the necessary savings for this funding level and protect core programs, the BLS is taking the steps listed below:

1. Curtail the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW). The QCEW program provides national, State, metropolitan statistical area, and county data on monthly employment and quarterly total wages and the number of establishments, by 6-digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code and by size of establishment. The BLS will achieve savings largely by reducing the scope and frequency of collection for select units in the QCEW survey that is used to validate and update the NAICS code of business establishments. This will result in a small degradation in the quality of QCEW data and make the QCEW slightly less accurate as a sampling frame.