The loss of the Economic Division was a major blow to the NLRB. It had a major tactical impact: Economic data helped the NLRB fulfill its adjudicatorial and prosecutorial work in areas such as unfair labor practices (ULPs), representation elections, and in determining remedial actions (such as reinstatement, back pay awards, and fines). Economic data also undermined employer resistance to the agency by linking that opposition to employer ULPs. The loss also left the board dependent on the biased information offered by the parties in dispute before it, leading to poor decision-making and far less success in the courts. It also had a major strategic impact: It left the board unable to determine whether its administration of the law was effective or not. Nor could the board determine whether labor unrest was a serious threat to the economy or not. As labor historian Josiah Bartlett Lambert put it: "Without the Economic Research Division, the NLRB could not undertake empirical studies to determine the actual impact of secondary boycotts, jurisdictional strikes, national emergency strikes, and the like." The Economic Division was critical to a long-range NLRB process to lead to the long-term evolution of industrial labor relations in the U.S., but that goal had to be abandoned. Most importantly, however, the evisceration of the Economic Division struck at the fundamental purpose of federal labor law, which was to allow experts to adjudicate labor disputes rather than use a legal process. With this data and analysis, widespread skepticism about the board's expertise quickly spread through Congress and the courts. It also left the board largely unable to engage in rulemaking, forcing it to make labor law on an inefficient, time-consuming case-by-case basis. As of 1981, NLRB was still the only federal agency forbidden to seek economic information about the impact of its activities.