By Ryan Young

It may not feel like spring yet, but regulatory agencies have turned their fancies to rulemaking, with 45 proposed and 70 final regulations ranging from the size of oranges to yellow lances.

On to the data:

• Last week, 70 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 63 the previous week.


• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 24 minutes.


• Federal agencies have issued 825 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 3,079 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,281 regulations.


• Last week, 1,202 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 964 pages the previous week.


• The 2018 Federal Register totals 15,374 pages. It is on pace for 57,366 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (which subtracts 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. One such rule has been published this year, none in the last week.


• The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations is $115 million.


• Agencies have published 24 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.


• In 2018, 130 new rules affected small businesses; 7 of them are classified as significant.

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

Reprinted from Competitive Enterprise Institute and sourced from FEE.org

Ryan Young is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s fellow focusing on regulatory and monetary policy and financial regulation. He also hosts CEI’s weekly podcast and writes the popular “Regulation of the Day.”

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