{"id":44438,"date":"2026-02-02T11:51:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T11:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/economic-data-is-getting-harder-to-come-by-and-the-alternative-wont-help-everyone\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T11:51:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T11:51:23","slug":"economic-data-is-getting-harder-to-come-by-and-the-alternative-wont-help-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/economic-data-is-getting-harder-to-come-by-and-the-alternative-wont-help-everyone\/","title":{"rendered":"Economic data is getting harder to come by, and the alternative won&#8217;t help everyone"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/697cf9aca645d118818858e9?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A glitchy $1 Bill\"\/><figcaption>\n<p>Carl Godfrey for BI<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li><em>This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>You can sign up for <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/subscription\/newsletter\/insider-today\" rel=\"noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Business Insider&#039;s daily newsletter here<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>They say numbers never lie, but what if we don&#039;t have them in the first place?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The erosion of economic data over the past year poses a massive risk for individuals and businesses, writes BI&#039;s Andy Kiersz. (As our economic data editor, he would know!)<\/p>\n<p>You might scoff at the idea that there isn&#039;t enough data. Sometimes it can feel like we have <em>too much<\/em> information on just about everything.<\/p>\n<p>The crux of the issue is government-issued data, specifically from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS is the backbone of our economic data infrastructure, offering hyper-specific information on everything from jobs to prices. Not only is it valuable in its own right, it&#039;s also leveraged by private-data providers to build out their feeds.<\/p>\n<p>But budget cuts, leadership changes, and old-school data-gathering techniques mean the data so many people and businesses rely on might not be that reliable for much longer.<\/p>\n<p>That creates challenges for anyone looking to navigate an economy that&#039;s hard enough in the best of circumstances.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Not everyone stands to lose, though.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Back when I was a real reporter and didn&#039;t just ride the coattails of my more-talented colleagues via this newsletter, I wrote <em>a lot<\/em> about alternative data.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#039;re unfamiliar, alt data is non-traditional information that&#039;s not readily available and often takes some time to sift through. A classic example: Satellite images of a retail chain&#039;s parking lots to gauge foot traffic.<\/p>\n<p>Why is this relevant? Because it shows the outside-the-box ways companies and investors can get economic data. And while it might not be as all-encompassing as what the BLS offers, it&#039;s a start.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#039;s the rub. That data isn&#039;t available to everyone. In fact, plenty of investors pay more money to make sure they&#039;re the only ones that have it.<\/p>\n<p>So as publicly available data becomes tougher to get, a gap could grow between those who can afford to splurge for alternative options and everyone else.<\/p>\n<p>As we examine the future of capitalism, a common complaint about the current system is the widening chasm between the haves and the have nots. The loss of widely available economic data threatens to spread that even more.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Carl Godfrey for BI This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter. You can sign up for Business Insider&#039;s daily newsletter here. They say numbers never lie, but what if we don&#039;t have them in the first place? The erosion of economic data over the past year poses a massive risk for individuals [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44439,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-44438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}