FY20 Budget Moves from House to Senate

The House has passed appropriations bills to the Senate for FY2020, and there are important developments for statistical agencies. The Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) each received modest to substantial increases in their budgets.

With massive increases in spending by the Census Bureau needed to successfully complete the Decennial Census, Congress appropriated $7.558B for the Census Bureau, with $274M for Current Surveys and Programs and $7.284B for Periodic Censuses and Programs. Importantly, this provides 6.696B for the Decennial Census, which is the minimum requested to complete the count effectively.

BEA received $107.9M, which assumes full funding for efforts to produce annual GDP for Puerto Rico. In addition, Congress apportioned $1.5M to the Outdoor Recreation Satellite Account, and $1M to develop income growth indicators.

After several years of flat funding, the BLS operational budget has been increased to $655M. This includes $587M for necessary expenses for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, including advances or reimbursements to State, Federal, and local agencies and their employees for services rendered, with no more than $68M that may be expended from the Employment Security Administration account in the Unemployment Trust Fund. This number includes $27M for the relocation of the BLS headquarters to the Suitland Federal Center and $13M for investments in BLS such as an annual supplement to the Current Population Survey on contingent work, restoration of certain Local Area Unemployment Statistics data, and development of a National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.