2011 Budget for the Bureau of Labor Statistics

On April 15, 2011, President Obama signed into law the 2011 Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act. The Act provides $610.2 million in funding to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the 2011 fiscal year that began on October 1, 2010. This funding level is $35.1 million less than the President requested for BLS and $1.2 million less than the 2010 funding level.

The BLS will implement two cost-saving proposals, discussed below, and continue to meet its goals and objectives for 2011.

2011 Budget Highlights

The 2011 Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act for the BLS includes:

Restructure the Current Employment Statistics (CES) Program (−$5.0 million). This proposal restructured the way in which the CES program produces State and metropolitan area estimates at less cost and without adversely affecting the quality of the data produced. Specifically, the BLS has centralized the CES program’s production of State and metropolitan area data estimates and will introduce data collection enhancements to improve the CES program’s response rates for both preliminary and final estimates, thereby reducing the statistical error on the estimates.

Provide Alternative Data for Federal Locality Pay Setting (−$9.8 million). This proposal introduces an alternative to the Locality Pay Surveys (LPS) using data from two current BLS programs—the Occupational Employment Statistics survey and the Employment Cost Index. While still meeting the Pay Agent requirements, this new approach could be used to extend the estimation of pay gaps to areas that are not in the LPS sample, allowing for additional high quality data at a lower cost.

Last Modified Date: April 29, 2011