Warren, Markey Call on Labor Department to More Closely Track Nonprofit Workers’ Employment Data

Letter

Dear Acting Secretary Su and Director Young,
We write to urge the Department of Labor (DOL) to include $4 million to incorporate nonprofit
workforce data into the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Quarterly Census of Employment and
Wages (QCEW) as part of its Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget request.

The BLS’s role as the only independent statistical agency that objectively and accurately measures labor market activity is crucial to informed policymaking and business decisions. Policymakers—along with economists, researchers, businesses, and jobseekers—rely heavily on the accuracy and independence of BLS data. However, the BLS budget over the past decade has not kept up with inflation, forcing the agency to cut key products and reducing the scope of others, such as the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW). The QCEW is an essential tool for policymakers and businesses across nearly every industry, covering nearly 95 percent of American jobs. Every quarter, it provides an accounting of employment and wages across the economy and catalogs data for specific sectors. QCEW- generated data provides industry leaders and public officials with vital information to make business and economic policy decisions.

However, the QCEW reports do not disaggregate nonprofit workforce data, despite the roughly 10
percent of American workers—almost 17 percent in Massachusetts—who work for a nonprofit.
Instead, BLS issues a separate nonprofit report roughly every five years, leaving nonprofit leaders and policymakers to make decisions with data that no longer reflect the reality of the economy. For example, nearly four years after the start of COVID-19 pandemic—which placed significant strain on nonprofits providing critical medical and economic services to Americans across the country—the BLS’s most recent nonprofit workforce data report dates from 2017.

This lack of timely data presents a significant barrier to accurate and effective policymaking and sector planning. Thus, we urge you to include $4 million in DOL’s upcoming budget request to add sector specific nonprofit data to future quarterly QCEW reports.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

Source