Access to federal data in flux

Summary

Marketplace Episode Summary: "Access to Federal Data in Flux" Release Date: February 21, 2025 Host: Kai Ryssdal

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1. Corporate Diversification: Walmart's Strategic Shifts

Timestamp: [00:02] – [03:07]

The episode kicks off with a deep dive into Walmart's recent quarterly earnings call, where CEO Doug McMillan highlights significant growth in various non-retail sectors:

• Advertising Sales: Up 29% last quarter.
• Third-Party Marketplace Growth: Increased by 34%.
• Membership Income: Achieved double-digit growth.

Kai Ryssdal remarks on Walmart's evolution beyond its traditional big-box retail model:

“Walmart, the quintessential big box, right? Not anymore.” [01:15]

Daniel Ackerman elaborates on Walmart’s diverse business ventures:

“Walmart can use that profit to keep prices low at its retail stores, something that could come in handy.” [02:46]

Jason Miller, a supply chain professor, notes:

“They have the scale, they have the infrastructure and they have the expertise.” [01:47]

Despite these robust earnings, Walmart's stock saw a 6.5% decline, signaling market skepticism.

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2. The Crisis of Access to Federal Data

Timestamp: [03:07] – [09:18]

A significant portion of the episode addresses the instability surrounding access to federal data sets. David Van Riper, Director of Spatial Analysis for IPUMS at the University of Minnesota, discusses the repercussions of restricted access to essential government data:

“I think it's definitely concerning. We have never seen such a widespread removal of public access to data that should be made available to the public.” [08:36]

Van Riper compares federal statistical data to an "X-ray" that offers critical insights into population dynamics and community health. The abrupt unavailability of CDC and other key data sets has disrupted workflows for researchers and policymakers alike:

“If you didn't have those data sets downloaded to your local computing system, you started to get real nervous about how you were going to access those data.” [05:56]

The conversation highlights the urgent measures taken by data professionals to secure necessary information and the potential long-term impacts on research and policy evaluation.

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3. The AI Boom: User Metrics and Monetization Challenges

Timestamp: [09:18] – [12:46]

The discussion shifts to the rapid expansion of AI platforms, with ChatGPT leading the charge at over 400 million weekly active users, marking a 30% increase in recent months. Megan McCarty Carino explores the competitive landscape:

“Large language models have become a commodity.” [11:17]

Gary Marcus and Ted Mortensen emphasize the saturation of the AI market:

“Everybody's using the same formula to make essentially the same kind of thing.” [11:24]

Despite the high user engagement, many AI companies struggle with profitability. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, admitted losses on Pro subscriptions, raising questions about sustainable revenue models. The panel discusses potential monetization strategies, including industry-specific applications and advertising.

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4. Government Spending: Cuts and Consequences

Timestamp: [14:54] – [17:46]

The focus returns to government fiscal policies, critiquing the misrepresentation of "savings" through spending cuts. Martha Gimble, Executive Director of the Budget Lab at Yale, and Justin Wolfers, Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan, argue that indiscriminate cuts often lead to greater economic drawbacks:

“Every time the government writes a check to someone's grandmother, we call it Social Security. That's actually the government doing its job.” [16:12]

Wolfer warns against short-term savings that result in long-term losses:

“You might save $100,000 in payroll, and in return, you might go and invest $400 million in a roads project that doesn't yield much of a benefit.” [15:42]

The segment underscores the complexity of federal budgeting and the unintended consequences of reducing essential services and enforcement capabilities.

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5. Solar Energy: Growth Amid Uncertain Tax Credits

Timestamp: [17:46] – [20:27]

The solar industry is experiencing significant growth, bolstered by tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act. Abigail Ross Hopper, President of the Solar Energy Industries Association, describes the sector's resilience despite potential policy shifts:

“They are waiting to see if they'll go up or down.” [20:27]

Jason Miller highlights the advantages of solar energy:

“It provides electricity that has no variable fuel cost.” [19:26]

Dennis Wamstead from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis adds:

“Electricity demand is growing again in the US for the first time in about 15 years... solar's speed of deployment works to its advantage.” [19:18]

The discussion points to the declining costs of solar infrastructure and its adaptability, even in the face of reduced government incentives.

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6. Real Estate: Navigating Homeownership Challenges

Timestamp: [20:27] – [24:14]

The episode features a personal story from Monique Coleman, who purchased a home in Charlestown, West Virginia, in 2023. Coleman shares the ups and downs of homeownership, from unexpected maintenance issues to financial strategizing amidst fluctuating interest rates:

“Homeownership is not for the weak... I feel accomplished.” [21:43]

Her narrative illustrates the broader challenges faced by new homeowners, including the need for flexibility in financial planning and the impact of rising interest rates on long-term investment decisions.

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7. Final Thoughts: The Power of Words and Market Dynamics

Timestamp: [24:14] – End]

Kai Ryssdal wraps up by addressing the importance of precise language in governmental reporting and its implications for public understanding. He reflects on the broader themes of market resilience and the evolving economic landscape.

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Notable Quotes:

• David Van Riper: “Federal statistical data sets like an X-ray... we really have to rely on other channels of communication which might be biased.” [05:02]
• Jeff Bezos and James Bond Commentary: A light-hearted critique on corporate control and creative direction, underscoring the intersection of business and culture.

This episode of "Marketplace" offers a comprehensive exploration of current economic trends, corporate strategies, and the critical importance of accessible federal data. Through expert interviews and real-world stories, host Kai Ryssdal elucidates the complexities shaping today's business and economic environment.

Transcript

[Kai Rysdal]

Corporate news to start, government data and the absence of it to follow. And then they keep using that word. It does not mean what they think it means. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace in Los Angeles. I'm Kai Rysdal. It is Thursday today, the 20th of February. Good as always to have you along, everybody. Those of you who've been wondering what's going on on Wall street, how traders seem so sanguine given the uncertainty, the answer came to us early this morning, 7am local time in Bentonville, Arkansas. To be specific, the quarterly earnings call from the world's biggest retailer, during which Walmart CEO Doug McMillan touted some of the highlights. Advertising sales were up 29% last quarter. He said its third party, Marketplace, grew 34%. Membership income grew. Grew double digits as well. But careful listeners will have noticed that none of those things are actually retail sales. Daniel Ackerman gets us going with what Walmart's up to besides just selling things.

[Daniel Ackerman]

Walmart, the quintessential big box, right?

[Kai Rysdal]

Not anymore. They've done a pretty good job the last couple of years investing in these alternative businesses.

[Daniel Ackerman]

Michael Baker heads consumer research at TA Davidson. He says those alternative businesses include taking a cut from third parties who sell through Walmart's website. Walmart also sells ads on said website. It offers shipping services, too. And one reason Walmart can do all that, says Qihang Lee, a business professor at UConn, is because it's really big.

[Kai Rysdal]

They have the scale, they have the infrastructure and they have the expertise.

[Daniel Ackerman]

Walmart has thousands of trucks, warehouses and stores, plus a fancy web platform, all initially built for its sprawling retail business. Jason Miller is a professor of supply chains at Michigan State.

[Jason Miller]

When you build up all of these resources that may have excess capacity if you can sell that on the marketplace and make sense.

[Daniel Ackerman]

Miller says this isn't an original idea. For instance, Amazon has allowed third party sellers on its platform for decades, and Walmart is following suit.

[Jason Miller]

Some of these third product resellers may be selling niche goods that Walmart itself would never want to stock in inventory and sell itself. And what it does is it gives the consumer a broader product portfolio.

[Daniel Ackerman]

Michael Baker of DA Davidson says there's a reason Walmart is leaning into its advertising. Logistics and marketplace services all fall under.

[Kai Rysdal]

This heading of alternative businesses and all have higher margins. They're pretty profitable.

[Daniel Ackerman]

Baker says Walmart can use that profit to keep prices low at its retail stores, something that could come in handy.

[Kai Rysdal]

At times when the core business might be a little bit more impacted by some external doctors.

[Daniel Ackerman]

Because at the End of the day, retail is still Walmart's core business. It sells more stuff to Americans than anyone else. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace.

[Kai Rysdal]

It's worth a note here that Walmart is the first of the big retailers to report earnings. So perhaps more bad tidings to come in this moment when consumers, as we have been telling you, are a tad irritable. Elsewhere on Wall street, big bank shares took a tumble today too. We will have the details. Wall we do the numbers. There are a lot of questions about what's happening in and to this economy right now. We've covered some of them the past couple of weeks and here's another who does and more to the point, who does not have access to government data, specifically public data sets from the CDC and other key agencies that have been taken offline. We're going to talk about government data today and tomorrow. What happens when it goes away and why we need it. David VanRiper is the director of spatial analysis for something called the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, known colloquially as ePams, which makes sometimes unwieldy government data sets easier to use. Welcome to the program.

[David Van Riper]

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

[Kai Rysdal]

This will sound like a silly question, but I don't really think it is. Why does what you do matter?

[David Van Riper]

So I think of federal statistical data sets like an X ray and they provide information about the population throughout the U.S. diving all the way down to individual neighborhoods and thinking of it as an X ray. We can really hone in on various parts of the body and really figure out what's going on in our communities.

[Kai Rysdal]

Okay. So given that the state of play here with access to federal data is in flux, it does seem like some of the data has come back. Some of it maybe not. My question is, was there a moment in the last three and a half, four weeks when you were woke up and said, oh shoot, this is bad?

[David Van Riper]

Yeah. So I went to bed on Thursday, January 30, kind of thinking that the next day was going to be a kind of a regular work day. And I woke up on the 31st and got to my office and started looking at Slack and social media and started to realize that oh, a lot of the Centers for Disease Control data are not available anymore and started to realize that oh, this could become a problem for people who rely on these data to carry out their, their day to day jobs.

[Kai Rysdal]

Say more about that. So more about those problems. Yeah.

[David Van Riper]

So, you know, a lot of people have built workflows, they kind of build these data sets into their day to day operations. They're continually going to federal statistical websites to look up documentation, to download data files. And all of a sudden those were no longer accessible. And if you didn't have those data sets downloaded to your local computing system, you started to get real nervous about how you were going to access those data. Potentially a long time into the future.

[Kai Rysdal]

You and your colleagues in point of fact, actually spent some frenzied moments there in sort of late January, early February, downloading basically everything you could.

[David Van Riper]

We did. We wanted to make sure that we had all of the data and documentation especially that we needed for our particular data products. We were also getting inquiries from groups around the country asking us if we had grabbed data set X or dataset Y. And we were in communication with other organizations and people who were also kind of grabbing and downloading as much data as they could.

[Kai Rysdal]

We don't know what's going to happen with federal data. The, the management of it right now is chaotic at best. And I guess that leads to this question. What happens if in six weeks somebody flips a switch and this data just vaporizes and never comes back?

[David Van Riper]

I think the research community has done a lot of work in the last three weeks to download as much data as they could. As it's come back online right now, it's mostly we're going through a process of documenting who has what data. Going forward though, if federal statistical products are delayed or are no longer provided, right. If they're canceled, it's going to be like we've taken that X ray machine away from a doctor. We're not going to know what's going on in communities. And being able to measure whether or not specific policies are having the expected impact, you know, those, those statistical data sets are really fundamental for, for that measurement.

[Kai Rysdal]

So it's, you know, it's interesting. I, I went to your website and I went to the mission statement and the first sentence in the mission statement is ipums democratizes access to the world's social and economic data for current and future generations. That seems unobjectionable. And I guess I wonder as a guy now who's been doing this for decades. Right. What you make of this current moment?

[David Van Riper]

I think it's definitely concerning. Right. I think we've never seen such a widespread removal of public access to data that, you know, should be made available to the public. You know, it's all paid for by our tax dollars. And without that public data, you, you really have to rely on other channels of communication which might be biased or which might be telling you a story they want you to hear. But we as a population aren't allowed to see the data to make our own assessments of what's going on.

[Kai Rysdal]

David Van Riper at IPUMS at the University of Minnesota David, thanks for your time. I really appreciate it.

[David Van Riper]

Thank you very much for having me. Appreciate it.

[Kai Rysdal]

If we've learned anything the past what decade, maybe 15 years, it's that the key metric for digital economy companies, no matter the industry, is the number of active users weekly, monthly, take your pick. That's true for streaming companies, it's true for social media platforms, and it turns out it's true for AI companies, too. Reuters reports that ChatGPT now has more than 400 million weekly active users. That's up 30% in just the past couple of months. And the growth comes as chatbot competition overall has been heating up, given Deepseek the highly capable, as you might remember, but purportedly much cheaper to build Model from China the success of free open source models like that, like Deep Seq does put some focus on how AI companies can monetize their products and also whether they can recoup the billions of dollars that have been spent so far. Marketplace's Megan McCarty Carino takes that one.

[Megan McCarty Carino]

400 million weekly active users is nothing to sneeze at, says Eric Suefert, an independent tech analyst at Mobile Dev Memo.

[David Van Riper]

But the problem is consumers are just going to migrate to whichever model or whichever app they feel best serves them.

[Megan McCarty Carino]

About a month ago, Deepseek topped Apple's download charts. This week, it's the latest version of Xai's Grok. Then there's Perplexity Anthropic's Claude, Google's Gemini. Large language models have become a commodity, says Gary Marcus, a professor emeritus of cognitive science at NYU and author of Taming Silicon Valley.

[Jason Miller]

Everybody's using the same formula to make essentially the same kind of thing, which.

[Kai Rysdal]

Makes it hard for any of them.

[Jason Miller]

To say, you know, their product is.

[Megan McCarty Carino]

Distinct from anybody else's, which means companies are likely to compete on price, says Ted Mortensen, tech strategist at Baird.

[Kai Rysdal]

You're going to see a race to.

[David Van Riper]

Zero in the near term.

[Megan McCarty Carino]

Most companies already offer a free tier, and they'll be under pressure to keep lowering prices for advanced features, Mortensen Sundays. Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on X the company was losing money even on its Pro subscriptions, which cost $200 a month. Computing costs should come down as semiconductor efficiency improves, says Doug O'Laughlin at Semianlysis as hardware improves.

[David Van Riper]

Yeah, we see cost downs of like 1/10, 100th.

[Megan McCarty Carino]

But consumer chatbot memberships aren't likely to drive profits for AI companies, says analyst Andy Thurai at Constellation Research. What will Tailoring AI systems for industries that will pay a premium for productivity gains like healthcare, law or finance.

[Jason Miller]

It's about the business use case or the business problems you solve with it.

[Megan McCarty Carino]

And AI companies might also look to make money the way most apps do advertising. Megan McCarty Carino for Marketplace.

[Kai Rysdal]

You know what, you don't need AI for finding our podcast. That's what if you miss it on the air, go to marketplace.org you can download it there. Or of course, the platform of your choice. Just follow us, would you?

[Monique Coleman]

Coming up, there's like little simple things that people are like, you can just shut off the water and I'm like, what do you mean?

[Kai Rysdal]

First time home ownership, am I right? First though, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrials down 450 points today. Sounds like a lot. It's 1%, 44,176. The NASDAQ down 93 points, about a half percent, 19,962. The S&P 500 slipped 26 points, 4/10% 61 and 17. Just heard from Dan Ackerman about Walmart's other lines of business besides retail. The company posted 4,000 quarter earnings that were strong, but shares nonetheless down 6.5%. Target missed to the tune of 2%. Chipotle says it's using AI to hire 20,000 workers specifically to prep for a period from March to May that they are calling. I'm not making this up. Burrito season one might fairly ask, is it AI that's trying to make burrito season happen? Chipotle down 1.4% today. Bonds rose yield on the 10 year T. Note 4.4. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rysdal. The setup for this next segment is that words have meaning and sometimes the ways words are used doesn't really match what those words mean. The word of the day today is saving or savings in the plural, as in Elon Musk and his operatives say their government cuts so far total $55 billion in savings. Setting aside for a second the reporting that NPR has done that documents just a quarter of that amount government saving money that is not spending. It isn't saving the way most of us think about it.

[Martha Gimble]

My name is Martha Gimble. I'm the executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale. There's no dollar that the federal government is spending that isn't going somewhere. And so whenever we're talking about cuts, we have to talk about what we're no longer going to be getting for those dollars.

[Kai Rysdal]

For instance, the savings the Trump administration is promising by cutting or capping funding for research at the National Institutes of Health.

[Martha Gimble]

If we're thinking about living standards moving forward, we have to be really figuring out how to drive productivity, drive innovation, et cetera. And we know that one of the things that drives productivity and innovation in the United States is our national commitment to and funding for research.

[Justin Wolfers]

I'm Justin Wolfers. I'm a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, the Department of Transportation.

[Kai Rysdal]

You might have seen just fired a bunch of analysts and economists whose job it was to figure out which infrastructure projects would be the best government investments.

[Justin Wolfers]

So you fire those folks, probably save $100,000 in payroll, and in return you might go and invest $400 million in A roads project that doesn't yield much of a benefit. You've saved a little bit, but we're all going to be a whole heck of a lot worse off as a result.

[Kai Rysdal]

I'll pause here, if I might, for the idea that government should be run.

[Justin Wolfers]

Like a business for a business. Outlays are almost always a bad thing. Spending more money on your suppliers, that hurts your bottom line. But every time the government writes a check to someone's grandmother, we call it Social Security. That's actually the government doing its job. That's actually a benefit.

[Martha Gimble]

My name is Elena Patel. I'm an assistant professor at the University of Utah and a non resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute.

[Kai Rysdal]

Another item from the headlines that the Internal Revenue Service has started mass firings today. 7,000 people, mostly in the enforcement division, who had been funded by the Biden Era Inflation Reduction Act.

[Martha Gimble]

We know that every dollar that you cut reduces federal revenue. We learned that last year when Republicans tried to cut some of the extra IRA funding. The CBO scored that as a net.

[Kai Rysdal]

Revenue loser, saving money in salaries but losing revenue because every dollar spent on the IRS nets the government well more than a dollar in tax receipts. You roll all of that together, here's what you got.

[Martha Gimble]

When you're talking about economic growth, those things are incredibly.

[Kai Rysdal]

Two items. Now from the folder we keep around here labeled Shore, you can try to fight the market. First of all, data From Cox Automotive, 9.1% of new car sales in this economy last month were EVs. That's up from 7.4% January a year ago also. And second, the share of power in the United States coming from renewable sources in 2024 hit 24%, boosted by a record amount of solar generating capacity. That's from a report out today from Bloomberg's Energy Research Group and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. That growth in solar, by the way, was helped along by tax credits in the Inflation Reduction act, tax credits that are now in some jeopardy. So the industry is figuring out how to get along without them. Marketplace's Henry Epp reports the solar industry.

[Jason Miller]

Is no stranger to challenges. Tariffs on imported panels, labor shortages, long waits to connect new projects to the grid. Abigail Ross Hopper is president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

[Monique Coleman]

Many here call it the solar coaster kind of up and down and up and down.

[Jason Miller]

In 2024, the ride was mostly up. Tax credits were available and regulations stayed fairly steady, she says. And when that's the case, people are.

[Monique Coleman]

Willing to either invest their personal capital and put something on their home, or literally hundreds of millions of dollars and build something.

[Jason Miller]

Whatever happens to the tax credits, solar has something going for it in the energy market, says Dennis Wamstead at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

[Kai Rysdal]

We've gotten to a point where it's just incredibly cheap to build and it provides electricity that has no variable fuel cost.

[Jason Miller]

Electricity demand is growing again in the US for the first time in about 15 years, as more data centers, manufacturing plants, and EVs suck up more power. So Wamstead says solar's speed of deployment works to its advantage.

[Kai Rysdal]

You can build a solar plant in 12 to 18 months. If you want to build that as a gas plant, it's going to take you four to five years.

[Jason Miller]

And unlike a natural gas plant or even a wind turbine, solar arrays can be set up pretty much anywhere, says Tara narayanan@Bloomberg NEF.

[Kai Rysdal]

You can also have solar projects that.

[David Van Riper]

Are a lot smaller and can, you know, be on a field, can be.

[Kai Rysdal]

In slightly less sunny parts of the country.

[Jason Miller]

So if Congress rolls back tax credits that have benefited the solar industry, other factors Narayanan says may work in its favor. But the industry is still on that solar coaster, says Abigail Ross at the Solar Energy Industries Association.

[Monique Coleman]

It feels a little bit like, you know, when you're kind of going fast around a corner and you're banking up on the side, right? It feels a bit like that.

[Jason Miller]

And she says, they're waiting to see if they'll go up or down. I'm Henry Epp for Marketplace.

[Kai Rysdal]

Three words, people. Marketplace Morning Report two more words. David Brancaccio he and the gang get out of bed real early to get you everything you need to know to start your business day. Check it out. It's been a maybe not great start for real estate here in 2025. We mentioned a couple of things the other day. Home builder sentiment was down. That's from the national association of Home Builders and Housing starts. The Census Bureau reports were down in January over a year ago. But what about the people who did buy the past couple of years? Monique Coleman is one of them. She bought a newly built home in Charlestown, West Virginia back in 2023. We had her on back then. Here is the update.

[Monique Coleman]

Oh, my God. The last year has been crazy, if I can say crazy. Insane. I really think I went into home ownership with like rose colored glasses thinking, oh, my God, I'm living the American dream. And then the next thing you know, my windows all have to be replaced. Then after that, my toilet's got to be replaced. There's like little simple things that people are like, you can just shut off the water. And I'm like, what do you mean? And they're like, counterclockwise. And I'm like, wait, take it back. And I'm watching YouTube videos and I'm trying to do all the things. So my workaround has been to use my neighbors. Like, I literally put an ad in my Facebook group and somebody's husband came to my house to put together a sofa. But what she did not tell me was that she was sending her children. So I got her husband and her kids over at my house putting together my sofa. I am in a different financial mindset than I was when I, you know, started saving because now I am building wealth now. I have like money market accounts and now I have, you know, IRAs and things like that. That honestly, if it never would have started with the home ownership, I probably, probably never would have even been thinking about that. The interest rates, I'm always checking just to see, like, hey, right now it's a six. When it gets to a three, do I want to refinance or is it that time to sell? In my mind, I am either going to do one of two things. I am going to put a for rent sign out in front of this thing and put it for rent and then, you know, get a management company because hello, landlord, I am not, or, you know, sell it right, take my equity and then keep it moving. I really feel like me moving to Charlestown, even though the housing situation has been crazy, the experience that it's been for me and My daughter has been great. I found a church home. I found a community of people that I can hang out with. I can be myself. I think homeownership is not for the weak. I think that I'm happy that I did it because, yes, I have a lot of equity now. I said I was going to buy this house and I did it. So on that front, I feel accomplished.

[Kai Rysdal]

Monique Coleman, living for now in Charlestown, West Virginia. This final note on the way out today, which is, I'm reasonably sure this week's sign, the apocalypse is upon us. With a caveat that James Bond movies have been through the years misogynist and boring and sometimes just plain bad. I am relatively sure the latest development is not an improvement. The family that has long controlled the franchise has sold creative control to Amazon. And that means Jeff Bezos now controls who plays James Bond, who writes the script and when the movies get made. I am just telling you right now and right here, if Bezos casts himself, which you could totally see happening, I'm out. John Buckley, John Gordon, Noya Carr, Diantha Barker, Amanda Peecher. Come on, he would totally do it. Stephanie Sieck are the Marketplace editing staff. Amir Babawi is the managing editor. I'm Kai Rysdal. We will see you tomorrow. Everybody, this is APM.