The economic numbers are done by using statistical sampling. In each case, a government agency thinks that it’s important that they have the current figures (within a given margin of error) on certain economic situations, so they work out a procedure for doing a survey (every week, every month, every quarter, or whatever) of that part of the economy. There’s no such thing as regular reporting of each gas station in the U.S. on its prices. If it weren’t for the government agency doing the statistical survey, the numbers wouldn’t exist.
Crime rates, on the other hand, are complete and supposedly accurate counts of the crimes that occur throughout the U.S. Every city keeps a count of its crimes. At the end of the year they report them to the state, and then the state reports them to the F.B.I. The F.B.I. then has to compile these numbers into an annual report. Sometimes states refuse to give their figures to the F.B.I. Sometimes cities undercount their crimes. It thus takes some estimation work for the F.B.I. to produce an annual crime survey.
All these statistical counts only exist because some government agency established a department to either do a survey or to collect complete numbers that they were sent. Such departments are established only because some group lobbied Congress to get it established. There are fairly update surveys of economic statistics and only yearly compilations of crime statistics because groups of businessmen demanded the economic surveys, while no one with enough pull has demanded up-to-date crime surveys.
