Shutdown Cancels Jobs Data. What It Means for the Fed.

The government shutdown disrupted the gathering of data for the October jobs report. (Al Drago/Getty Images)

Key Points

• The federal government won’t publish a typical jobs report for October due to a lapse in appropriations.
• The unemployment rate for October won’t be included in the upcoming jobs report, which was 4.3% in August.
• The BLS canceled the press release for the September Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, but data will be included in the Dec. 9 release.

The federal government won’t publish a typical jobs report for the month of October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wednesday. But at least some of the October employment data will be available, though not in time to provide insights to Federal Reserve officials ahead of their upcoming December policy meeting.

The federal government shutdown that started on Oct. 1 prevented collection and release of a whole host of October economic data, including updates on labor conditions. Following Thursday’s release of the September jobs report, the BLS will publish the November employment summary report on Dec. 16.

The latest updates to the jobs report publishing schedule likely lowers probability of December rate cut, writes Michael Gapen, chief economist at Morgan Stanley. That’s because policymakers will not get an updated unemployment rate, a key metric that officials weigh, for October or November ahead of the Dec. 9-10 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee.

“Payrolls alone, unless they move extremely sharply, do not tell the FOMC whether the labor market is easing or tightening, and an easing labor market is the key argument for a December rate cut,” Gapen says. “A cut is still possible if jobless claims, retail sales, and anecdotes about Black Friday spending show enough weakness, or if the September unemployment rate deteriorates more than we expect.”

The BLS said Wednesday that it was canceling its typical press release of the jobs data for October because the agency couldn’t collect responses for its household survey, used to generate metrics like unemployment rate and labor participation, for the October 2025 reference period “due to a lapse in appropriations.”

“The household survey data is not able to be retroactively collected,” the agency said.

The current employment statistics, or establishment, survey data that is used to generate the monthly change in payrolls will be published and incorporated into the Dec. 16 jobs report for November, the BLS said.

The agency plans to extend the collection period for November data for both the household and establishment surveys, and extra processing time will be added.

The adjustment means the eventual jobs report won’t include a figure for the unemployment rate, which stands at 4.3% as of August. The Chicago Fed, using a blend of private and public data sources, estimates that the unemployment rate was 4.36%, or 4.4% on a rounded basis, in October.

The delay means that the Fed won’t have some new jobs data ahead of its next interest-rate decision on Dec. 10. Market expectations of a rate cut have fallen to nearly 30% in recent days, meaning investors broadly expect the Fed to keep rates steady.

In addition to providing guidance on upcoming jobs reports, the BLS also reported that they planned to cancel the press release for the September Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Data from the JOLTS survey for September, however, will be included alongside the Dec. 9 release for the October 2025 data.

The BLS has said that it will publish the September Producer Price Index on Nov. 25, but has provided no additional guidance yet on when to expect the October PPI or Consumer Price Index data.

Omair Sharif, founder of the research firm Inflation Insights, said he isn’t reading anything into the fact that the BLS still hasn’t announced anything with respect to the October CPI yet.

“Just because BLS decided to skip October household survey data collection, which I think would be harder than collecting October CPI data, doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about whether we’ll get an October CPI report,” he said Wednesday.

Write to Matt Peterson at matt.peterson@dowjones.com and Megan Leonhardt at megan.leonhardt@barrons.com