The Department of Labor will not be releasing the September jobs report or any economic data while the government is shut down, a BLS official confirmed to NOTUS.
“The Bureau of Labor Statistics has suspended data collection, processing, and dissemination due to the lapse in appropriations,” William Wiatrowski, acting BLS commissioner said. “Once funding is restored, BLS will resume normal operations and notify the public of any changes to the news release schedule on the BLS release calendar.”
The monthly jobs report, a key indicator that decision-makers rely on to judge the state of the economy, was slated to be published on Friday.
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It’s the first time the data has been delayed in more than a decade, and stems from the Trump administration’s decision to furlough all but one of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2,055 employees during the shutdown, according to the Department of Labor’s shutdown contingency plan.
“BLS will suspend all operations,” the plan reads. “Economic data that are scheduled to be released during the lapse will not be released. All active data collection activities for BLS surveys will cease.”
During the last government shutdown in 2019, the bureau was fully funded and the data was released on schedule.
The report was highly anticipated. September jobs data will be a key indicator of whether weak jobs numbers over past months were temporary or indicative of a long-term problem. The lack of data also presents a challenge for the Federal Reserve, which later this month will make a decision on whether to cut interest rates again.
The Department of Labor did not respond to a request for comment asking why BLS wasn’t funded.
The White House is blaming Democrats for the lapse in data.
“Businesses, families, policymakers and markets rely on timely and accurate public data for their decision-making, and it’s unfortunate that Democrats are gleefully throwing a wrench in our economy by shutting down the government to push freebies for illegal immigrants,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said.
Some Democrats have suggested that the White House is trying to avoid releasing the jobs numbers. Rep. Ritchie Torres said in a statement that the Trump administration “has a pattern of trying to deflect attention from poor economic indicators.”
“During the 2019 Trump shutdown, BLS released the data as scheduled, and they can do the same now. The American people deserve transparency about the state of our economy from this administration, no matter what,” Torres said. “The public has a right to the facts, shutdown or not.”
In lieu of government data from BLS, private companies are still publishing jobs data, though it isn’t nearly as comprehensive. Payroll company ADP found employers cut 32,000 jobs in September.
“The U.S. economy is in a jobs recession — a broad-based and persistent decline in jobs,” Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s, wrote based on ADP’s report. “In the past several months, payroll job growth has come to a near standstill, and this is before likely significant downward revisions to the numbers. When all the data are in, it would not be surprising if the economy had consistently lost jobs since as far back as June.”