Are the new jobs good jobs? Well, we're not sure…

Additionally, gathering and processing more information costs money, and funding has been an increasingly serious issue for the BLS since the recession. Long said that the Bureau has been forced to make some hard decisions about the data it already collects. For example, the Bureau’s 2012 budget called for the elimination of the International Labor Comparisons Program, which collects data on the labor markets of other countries and adjusts them to common framework so that they can be compared to data gathered domestically.

“We’re also victims of the budget-cutting mania,” Long said. “I think our priority right now is to try to keep doing the surveys that we’re doing, not so much to expand.”

Why not recommend gathering more data?

The BLS can, however, make recommendations and requests on data collection to the OMB, the General Accounting Office, and directly to Congress, and normally does so by publishing a recommendation in the Federal Register. There is then a comment period of 60 days. If a change would require additional funding from Congress, the Department of Labor can include the request in its proposed annual budget, said Jacob Galley, another BLS economist.

The Department of Labor did not respond to a question from Remapping Debate about why data on occupational wages for new hires was not seen as meriting a request for funding, and a representative of the BLS said that he would not be able to address questions about why the Bureau had not recommended gathering additional wage data for new hires by press time.

Carl Van Horn, director of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, said that in the specific case of these data, it made little sense not to request additional funding.

“In the absence of this information, both policy makers and individuals are making decisions that cost billions and billions of dollars without the data that would inform those decisions,” he said. “It’s important to remember that, in the scheme of things, collecting this data would not cost a lot of money. It would well pay off, both in savings from increasing the effectiveness of programs, and in the functioning of the economy as a whole.

“This would not be a hard case to make,” he added. “If [the BLS is] not making this case, they should be.”

Not perfect, but a lot better

Economists stressed that there was no single question that would provide a perfectly clear picture of the labor market, and a question about the wages of new hires would have its limitations, as well. For one, although occupational data provides a much finer level of detail than broad classifications by industry, there is still some variation in the earnings of new hires within the same occupation, depending on factors like education and experience. In addition, the wage data gathered on new hires would only be able to be compared directly to the average previous wage of all workers in an occupation, not the average for the subset of workers who had lost their jobs in the recession.

Nevertheless, most economists agreed that it is very important to know whether the jobs currently being created are paying less, and that in order to answer that question obtaining data on the wages of new hires is key.

“This looks like the most lopsided recovery in American history,” said Andrew Sum of Northeastern University. In that context, a targeted response is required, he continued, making it crucial to know which occupations are paying less to new workers. Sum said that the lack of relevant data on the labor market made it easier for policy-makers to ignore issues like unemployment and wage decline.

In general, economists stressed that the more information that can be gathered, the stronger the likelihood of making effective public policy. “We are very far from spending all of the money that would be socially useful in gathering information about the labor market,” said John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

When asked whether that fact should be seen as reflective of our policy priorities, Schmitt said, “That question is above my pay grade.”