It strikes me as a rather large and obtrusive display of non-essential information, which for some reason has been given priority placement at the top of the editor.

I would think that it was placed at the top because it also has the Table of Contents. I'm not sure about the word or block count, but TOC could be very helpful for many writers, especially if a post becomes rather a long one.

I'm not sure if any Gutenberg devs will read my comment, but what about the idea to be able to show that TOC on the published post, so readers could also utilize it?