The shutdown is cutting off data you paid for

"More than that, government data measures our progress on key issues, drives major business and investment decisions, determines the size of Social Security checks - and gives us a shared, trusted quantitative reality. Driving the news: Data.census.gov, the easiest-to-use portal for accessing U.S. Census Bureau data, is broken as of Wednesday morning. "Due to the lapse of federal funding, this website is not being updated," reads a banner atop the page. "Any inquiries submitted via data.census.gov will not be answered until appropriations are enacted.""

"Its most notable previous salvo was President Trump's sudden firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer in August, following big downward revisions in previous job growth estimates. That move made "clear that any federal data collector who delivers unwelcome news could lose their job in an instant," Axios' Neil Irwin wrote at the time - and sent the business and financial worlds into a panic over the veracity of key government data moving forward."

Data.census.gov is not being updated because of a lapse in federal funding, and a banner states inquiries will not be answered until appropriations are enacted. Some Census data remains available through other means, including an API that requires technical skill to use. The Bureau of Labor Statistics site also shows suspended updates, with its last update listed as October 1, 2025, and updates to resume only when federal operations restart. These outages occur amid actions by the Trump administration affecting federal data, including the abrupt firing of the BLS commissioner after major revisions to job growth figures. Several federal data collection efforts have already been ended, such as the USDA's annual food security report, and the Census Bureau did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Read at Axios