Called “an ineffective policy office that is a relic of the past,” the US Women’s Bureau faces elimination in the Trump administration’s proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget. Although last fiscal year Congress rejected zeroing out the Women’s Bureau funding, the renewed budgetary attack by the Trump administration is one of many examples of statistical agencies under threat from budget and staffing cuts, and the politicization of the very act of statistics gathering and analysis which turns the country’s economic and social activity into usable information for policymakers and the public alike.
In December, Federal News Network reported that most federal statistical agencies lost between 20 and 30 percent of their staff in 2025, citing the annual report of the American Statistical Association. That same ASA report found that widespread staffing and spending cuts had led to certain public-facing data sets being delayed, suspended, or canceled. Former Chief Statistician of the United States, Nancy Potok, decried these cuts noting, “these statistical agencies are essential infrastructure” with “so many critical decisions made based on federal statistical data.”
Established in 1920, the U.S. Women’s Bureau is simultaneously both one of the oldest of the nation’s statistic gathering agencies and today a canary in the coal mine for women, workers, and anyone dependent on reliable, nonpartisan data collection and reporting for informed policy making. The mission of the Women’s Bureau to study and improve the lives of working women remains largely the same as it was a century ago with activities including investigation of women’s laboring conditions, collection of statistics, developing policies, and, more recently, awarding grants to state and private entities to undertake projects that improves the lives of working women.
The Women’s Bureau grew out of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in response to the surge of wage-earning women who entered the workforce, often under poor and unregulated conditions. A movement of and on behalf of women workers and the resulting patchwork of state-level “protective” labor laws—ranging from restrictions on hours and night work to access to lunchrooms and toilet breaks—led to a broader push among labor activists and reformers for the creation of a permanent, federal-level agency to study and advocate for women workers. Then, the surge of women into the industrial workforce during World War I pushed Congress to create the Women’s Bureau within the Department of Labor. From its early activities of investigating working conditions in factories, mills, and offices, and promoting labor standards and protective legislation through to today, the Bureau has played an essential role in women’s economic activities, security, and workforce participation.