This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had a setback in one of its cases against Meta. The Fed raised interest rates. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from merger notifications to handling kiwi fruit.

On to the data:

  • Agencies issued 63 final regulations last week, after 46 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 40 minutes.
  • With 270 final regulations so far in 2023, agencies are on pace to issue 2,935 final regulations this year.
  • For comparison, there were 3,168 new final regulations in 2022 and 3,257 in 2021.
  • Agencies issued 52 proposed regulations in the Federal Register last week, after 38 the previous week.
  • With 192 proposed regulations so far in 2023, agencies are on pace to issue 2,087 proposed regulations this year.
  • For comparison, there were 2,044 new proposed regulations in 2022 and 2,094 in 2021.
  • Agencies published 510 notices last week, after 499 notices the previous week.
  • With 2,020 notices so far in 2023, agencies are on pace to issue 21,957 notices this year.
  • For comparison, there were 22,505 notices in 2022 and 20,018 in 2021.
  • Last week, 1,834 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,806 pages the previous week.
  • The average Federal Register issue in 2023 contains 328 pages.
  • With 7,555 pages so far, the 2023 Federal Register is on pace for 82,120 pages.
  • For comparison, the 2022 Federal Register totals 80,756 pages; 2021’s is 74,352 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (subtracting skips, jumps, and blank pages) is 96,994, set in 2016.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. There are five such rules so far in 2023, two in the last week.
  • That is on pace for 54 economically significant regulations in 2023.
  • For comparison, there were 43 economically significant rules in 2022 and 26 in 2021.
  • The total estimated cost of 2023’s economically significant regulations so far is for $55.64 billion to $78.51 billion, according to numbers provided by the agencies themselves.
  • For comparison, the running cost tally for 2022’s economically significant rules is for net costs of $45.28 billion to $78.05 billion. In 2021 net costs ranged from $13.54 billion to $19.36 billion. The exact numbers depend on discount rates and other assumptions.
  • There were six regulations meeting the broader definition of “significant” last week, after six the previous week.
  • So far this year, there are 25 new regulations meeting the broader definition of “significant.” That is on pace for 272 significant regulations in 2023.
  • For comparison, there were 255 such new regulations in 2022 and 387 in 2021.
  • So far in 2023, 52 new regulations affect small businesses, on pace for 528. Five of them are significant, on pace for 42.
  • For comparison, in 2022 there were 912 rules affecting small businesses, 70 of them significant. 2021’s totals were 912 rules affecting small businesses, 101 of them significant.

Highlights from last week’s new regulations:

The size of For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.