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Brandon Sheridan, associate professor of economics, spoke with in High Point, North Carolina, about the value of government data.

Sheridan notes that, not only does government data help businesses know the direction of the economy, but it fills a gap left by the private sector.

“Without that data, we are hamstrung in terms of being able to make policy decisions for the country, so we need to be collecting that data,” Sheridan said. “And even more than that, we need to actually fund these agencies and give them their autonomy … There shouldn’t be political meddling in the data collection process or in the data analysis process … These agencies need the ability to just let the statisticians do their work in a nonpartisan way and just show what the data are.”