The White House said on Wednesday that the October jobs and inflation data will probably never be released.
This warning came as the federal government edges toward restarting after being frozen for six straight weeks, the longest shutdown ever. The message? The damage has already been done.
This confirmation came from Karoline Leavitt, who serves as President Trump’s press secretary, during a briefing with reporters. She pointed fingers at Democrats, blaming them for permanently wrecking the Federal Statistical system.
“The Democrats may have permanently damaged the Federal Statistical system with October CPI and jobs reports likely never being released,” Karoline said, calling the entire situation a “permanent impairment” of data that can’t be fixed.
Shutdown cripples critical economic data pipelines
The government’s failure to keep agencies open long enough to collect information during October is at the center of this breakdown.
Because many departments, including the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, were fully shut down during the data collection window, the October nonfarm payrolls and consumer price index reports were never gathered.
That means there is likely nothing to release at all.
Besides those two headline stats, the shutdown also interrupted the collection of retail sales figures, trade stats, and consumer income and spending data. These are all numbers that financial markets, businesses, and policymakers rely on to make decisions.
Karoline said, “The Democrat shutdown made it extraordinarily difficult for economists, investors and policymakers at the Federal Reserve to receive critical government data.”
She also warned that this shutdown could hit economic growth directly, shaving off as much as 2 percentage points from the fourth quarter’s GDP.
A few hours earlier, Kevin Hassett, who heads the National Economic Council, said the hit may come in closer to 1.5 percentage points, but still confirmed, “For sure, it’s going to have an impact on this quarter,” while speaking at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C.
Wall Street reacts as some economists downplay the damage
While the White House emphasized lasting damage, not everyone agrees. Goldman Sachs, for example, increased its Q3 growth forecast to 3.7%, and nudged its full-year outlook to 1.3%, up 0.3 points from its prior estimate. The firm believes the impact on jobs data quality will be small, even with the missing month.
But timelines for data release are still fuzzy. On Wednesday, Citigroup economists said the September jobs report might still come out by Friday, though early next week seems more realistic.
But for October? They said we might be waiting until December before we see anything, if there’s anything to see at all.
Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial, explained why this matters. While reports like the jobs numbers are easy to catch up on by contacting businesses for raw figures, the shutdown overlapped the exact time the surveys needed to be done.
“The BLS could likely get multiple months’ worth of data during one collection period if needed,” Jeffrey said. But that only works for hard stats.
He said the real problem is the surveys that rely on people, asking workers about job-seeking behavior or availability. These are time-sensitive and once missed, there’s no way to go back. “It’s just the more nuanced qualitative surveys that cannot be replicated,” he said. “The water has gone under that bridge already.”
Jeffrey added that previous shutdowns mostly caused delays, not deletions. But this one was different. It lasted long enough to wipe out the entire collection period for some reports, making it impossible to even gather the October data in the first place.
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