Big Data for Twenty-First-Century Economic Statistics

The measurement infrastructure for the production of economic statistics in the United States largely was established in the middle part of the 20th century. As has been noted by a number of commentators, the data landscape has changed in fundamental ways since this infrastructure was developed. Obtaining survey responses has become increasingly difficult, leading to increased data collection costs and raising concerns about the quality of the resulting data. At the same time, the economy has become more complex and users are demanding ever more timely and granular data. In this new environment, there is increasing interest in alternative sources of data that might allow the economic statistics agencies to better address users' demands for information. Recent years have seen a proliferation of natively digital data that have enormous potential for improving economic statistics. These include item-level transactional data on price and quantity from retail scanners or companies' internal systems, credit card records, bank account records, payroll records and insurance records compiled for private business purposes; data automatically recorded by sensors or mobile devices; and a growing variety of data that can be obtained from websites and social media platforms.