Episode
Inside the BLS: William Beach on Trust, Data, and the Future of Federal Statistics
- Podcast
- The PolicyViz Podcast
- Published
- Sep 17, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 2788
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://zencastr.com/z/cWGmnBNt
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Summary
In this episode, I sit down with William Beach, former Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to dig into how America's most important economic data are produced. We talk about the nuts and bolts of how the BLS jobs numbers are collected, processed, and released, as well as why revisions happen and what they really mean. Bill shares his perspective on the commissioner's role, the challenges of falling survey response rates, and how statistical agencies can rebuild public trust in their work. We also touch on his experiences working across two administrations and his ideas for the future of federal data. This conversation sheds light on a system that is often misunderstood, yet vital for understanding the economy. Subscribe to the PolicyViz Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Become a patron of the PolicyViz Podcast [https://patreon.com/policyviz?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink] for as little as a buck a month Follow me on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/jschwabish/?hl=en], LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanschwabish/], Substack [https://jschwabish.substack.com/], X [https://twitter.com/jschwabish], Website [https://policyviz.com/], YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/c/JonSchwabish] Email: [email protected] [[email protected]]