US EIA, other statistical agencies face squeeze as staffing reductions mount

Federal staff reductions in the US that have accumulated since early in the Trump administration are pressuring agencies that develop data important for the energy sector, including the US Energy Information Administration.

The EIA workforce has been dwindling due to long-time employees taking the Trump administration's early retirement offer, cuts to employees still in a probationary period, and other staff departing due to return-to-office requirements. A government-wide hiring freeze also prevented the agency from keeping up with attrition.

In a July opinion piece in The National Interest, a conservative policy publication, former EIA Administrator Adam Sieminski outlined his concerns that staffing reductions increased the risks of eroding trust in the energy statistics and projections needed to make business and policy decisions and respond to energy crises. The agency was already facing concerns he viewed as unwarranted about its projections.

While the budget request for EIA remains flat at $135 million, the request for full-time employees is down 30% to 246 staff members, from the 353 allotted for 2025.

With continued attrition, the EIA may have only about 200 employees by the end of the year, down from roughly 350 at the start of 2025, according to Sieminski, who led the agency from 2012 through 2016.

The EIA declined to comment on those estimates.

A semi-independent part of the US Department of Energy, the EIA is the chief US government agency responsible for collecting, analyzing, forecasting and disseminating energy data. Its information is used by federal regulators and policymakers and is also relied upon by commodities producers, traders, market analysts and public utilities to track trends in production and consumption.

Weekly petroleum and natural gas inventory reports, based on collected survey data, are closely followed by commodity markets.

Like multiple other statistical agencies across the government, the EIA has delayed data releases in a few instances and cut back on others in 2025, as it grappled with lower staffing.

That included a short delay in a weekly gas storage release in May, the expected postponement of the 2025 International Energy Outlook, and an Annual Energy Outlook released without the usual analytical narrative. An annual report on net shell storage capacity was also canceled for 2025, and a monthly photovoltaic shipment report was delayed. The agency also removed the annual solar photovoltaic module shipments report from its release schedule.

Steven Pierson, director of science policy at the American Statistical Association, tracks some 13 agencies that produce data across the federal government.

"The biggest impacts we're seeing so far are due to staff loss," as well as stalled contracts and canceled contracts, Pierson said. "Federal statistical agency work is hugely labor-intensive, expertise-intensive and experience-intensive. So, these will have impacts."

Across federal statistical agencies, Pierson observed reductions in the detail of data releases, some delayed reports and cut programs, particularly in the last two months.

But Pierson said agencies have maintained the quality of the statistics that they have released.

At the time of July interviews with Platts, part of S&P Global Energy, both Sieminski and Pierson said they had not seen much political meddling in released government statistics.

Since then, Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Aug. 1, the day BLS released an unfavorable jobs report. The decision has raised concerns about potential political interference that could undermine confidence in economic indicators important for assessing market conditions.

"The McEntarfer firing was certainly improper political influence and changes the landscape for trusted federal statistics significantly," Pierson said in an Aug. 5 email. "The subsequent attacks on BLS also miss the point that Congress and the administration have long underfunded BLS and other statistical agencies, keeping them from updating their surveys and data collection efforts."

According to Pierson, the EIA has statutory protections for its autonomy that most of the other statistical agencies lack. It is not required to have its data reviewed or approved from above, and it produces its own schedule for data releases.

The EIA did not comment on how it was adjusting to the reduced staffing levels.

"EIA has earned its reputation for reliable, timely energy data," spokesperson Chris Higginbotham said in an email Aug. 5, responding to inquiries. "We remain committed to meeting high statistical standards, and we will not publish any data or analysis that does not meet our standards."

Alongside a roughly $7 million drop in spending on staffing, the agency's fiscal-year 2026 budget justification lists increases in spending, including $696,000 for energy supply surveys, $4.4 million for consumption and efficiency surveys, $2.15 million for energy modeling and analysis and $98,000 for resources and technology management.

Some areas of EIA's work have been hit harder than others. Multiple members of the natural gas team accepted retirement packages, requiring EIA to train people in other areas to handle the work, according to Sieminski.

Sieminski said he wrote his opinion piece to encourage a "more thoughtful" approach to cutting government that is still compatible with getting business done. It would be helpful if the EIA could regain authority to fill some of the empty positions, he said.

If staffing levels drop to 200, Sieminski said the agency may be forced to triage, choosing which surveys are needed "no matter what" and which could be dropped with less harm, or done by the private sector, even if at lower quality.

The risk of future steep cuts to energy-related agencies' staff resurfaced after the US Supreme Court in July found that President Trump can proceed with sweeping plans to reduce the federal workforce and restructure agencies.

Debate over data

Some observers said risks to confidence in EIA data predated recent staffing reductions.

Energy market analyst Phil Flynn of the PRICE Futures Group said one of the biggest concerns affecting trust among oil traders in recent years arose from so-called "missing barrels" from the weekly petroleum supply report between 2022 and 2023.

"We had huge adjustments in supplies sometimes as much as 1.42 million b/d," he said, at times adding "up to a small producing country."

The agency has since made efforts to address the issue, after identifying crude blending and under-reporting of output as key sources of the discrepancies, he noted.

Better use of technology might be more beneficial than growing staffing, Flynn said, expressing support for the Department of Government Efficiency to examine where inefficiencies are and where systems can be improved.

"Sometimes, if you don't have confidence going in, maybe the best way to restore confidence is to shake things up a little bit," Flynn said.

At other times, the agency has faced criticism over its approach, which assumes current policies will stay in place to develop a reference case when making long-term projections. The EIA previously drew complaints that it was undercounting future renewable use by assuming tax credits would expire, and more recently faced allegations that it overstated the impact of fuel efficiency standards on gasoline demand.

The International Energy Agency, partly funded by the US, came under even more fire from fossil fuel producers and advocates after its 2021 Roadmap to Net Zero report concluded that meeting the Paris Agreement's climate change target would require no new oil and gas upstream projects.

Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, referred to the EIA as the "gold standard" and said it needs more support to enable robust data collection.

"We were already impoverished in terms of data collection and politicizing of IEA," he said in an Aug. 6 interview. "The world needs accurate data collection. I think EIA needs to be bulked up to step up to provide the energy analysis that's sorely needed."