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This Guide was created by Carolyn Swidrak (retired).
The unemployment rate, annual mortality, immigration rates, and annual temperatures are just some of the statistics that are collected by many of the bureaus and agencies of the U.S. government. In many cases the federal government is the only body that has the resources and the authority to collect this kind of data.
The U.S. government does not have a centralized statistical reporting agency. There are 13 principal statistical agencies and more than 100 other statistical programs of significant size among executive branch agencies of the U.S. government. These agencies collect information on everything from general characteristics of the population of the United States to the number of specific types of fish commercially harvested each year. Each of the 13 principal agencies has a specific mandate for the information they collect, and the available statistics will generally cover every aspect of that topic.
The information in this Research Guide has been adapted from an article in March 2014 College & Research Libraries News, "Finding Government Statistics."