Why federal government data under-represent Native Americans

One group you probably won’t hear much about in the latest jobs report coverage? Native American workers.

The labor department collects data about American Indians and Alaska Natives but says its sample size is too small to include in the headline Employment Situation Summary.

The Brookings Institution is out with a new report that helps explain why Native people are underrepresented or left out entirely in so many federal datasets.

Trying to capture meaningful data about Native people through, for example, the race question on the U.S. Census, is complicated, said Kimberly Huyser, a professor at the University of British Columbia.

“The big issue is that we’re not actually a racial category,” Huyser said. “We’re a political one.”

Huyser said Native people are citizens of their tribal nations — in that way, Native identity is political, not racial.

And yet, the government treats Native identity as a racial category.

Huyser co-authored the report finding that when Native people are asked to racially classify themselves on government surveys, the vast majority check multiple boxes.

Her co-author, Robert Maxim with the Brookings Institution, said those responses end up in the catch-all “two or more races,” rather than the American Indian/Alaska Native category.

“When you cut the data in a way that excludes, maybe 70%, you have a really artificially small sample,” he said.

According to Maxim, that’s how Native workers get excluded from metrics like the monthly Jobs Report. It’s also how other federal datasets get wildly skewed.

One solution, Maxim said, is for the government to include mixed-race Native people in its American Indian category.

“Or even better, they could be providing funding and resources for tribes to be surveying their own citizens,” he said.

That could give us a more accurate picture of everything from employment and educational attainment to life expectancy in Indian Country.