The rust belt resonates with labor historians, but we generally don’t use the term. Years ago our friend Kim Hill, then at the Center for Automotive Research, CAR, in Ann Arbor, suggested it denigrates the progress being made in many of those communities, asking if we had visited Ann Arbor recently. We hadn’t, and respect his opinion. But Erika McEntarfer, former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, described the region where she grew up in western New York as the rust belt in a recent talk, sponsored by the Levy Institute, on the importance of official data. Her community was “struggling to find its way economically…with unemployment very high and jobs very scarce.” She spoke at Bard College’s Olin […]
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The BLS over time: “A tin can tied to my coat tail”
We have worked closely with the Bureau of Labor Statistics for decades and, in the belief that people are more likely to value what they understand,...
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How to Diversify Ecological Science
Karina A. Sanchez, Amanda J. Bevan Zientek, and Emily A. Holt just released their study of college students’ awareness of institutional, structural,...
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Lost Pages: Eroding our confidence in public data
The effects of a recent executive order purging advisory boards working with federal agencies include dismantling the Bureau of Labor Statistics’...