The shutdown-imposed data gap could be permanent
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
The government shutdown is over. The data disruption it sowed will linger.
Why it matters: The record-long data blackout will soon give way to a slew of delayed reports.
- But there might be a permanent gap in our understanding of how the economy fared in October that could impair the interpretation of November data.
- The November data "will suffer from the lack of contextualization that we typically have ... a problem that will be significantly ameliorated in early January with the December data," Guy Berger, a senior fellow at the Burning Glass Institute, wrote Wednesday.
Driving the news: The White House said Wednesday that the Bureau of Labor Statistics might not release any of last month's data.
- "The Democrats may have permanently damaged the Federal statistical system with October CPI and jobs reports likely never being released," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press conference.
- Leavitt added that releases "will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period."
Reality check: The BLS has yet to confirm whether that is the case. The economic agency is expected to publish a revised schedule for economic releases soon, as are the Bureau of Economic Analysis (GDP, trade) and the Census Bureau (retail sales, housing starts and more).
- September jobs data should come relatively quickly — possibly as soon as next week — because that report was near completion before the agencies went dark.
- Whether the October jobs report will be released in totality will come down to whether the BLS believes it can accurately retroactively report the data that would have been collected if not for the shutdown.
Between the lines: It's possible the BLS may simply release the payroll data that stems from a survey of businesses, the responses to which are often late (and subsequently used for revisions).
- But the same cannot be said for the household survey. This other component of the jobs report produces the unemployment rate, an indicator that private sector data often cannot estimate.
What they're saying: "The household survey wasn't conducted in October, so we're going to get half the employment report," White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said Thursday morning on Fox News.
- "We'll get the jobs part, but we won't get the unemployment rate," he added. "We probably ... will never actually know for sure what the unemployment rate was in October."
What to watch: "The shutdown appears most problematic for the quality of CPI," Goldman Sachs economists warned in a note, adding that the price data collection process — much of which is done in person — was already strained.
- Workers can't return to the past to collect price data, meaning the agency will have to "impute," or estimate, the price changes for certain categories.
- The possibility of such widespread estimates risks the data falling short of the agency's standards, a reason why officials might skip the release altogether.
The bottom line: "Because of the long shutdown, October 2025 will permanently remain a partial blind spot in America's official record," the Friends of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a group led by former agency leaders, wrote.
