We can guess that the BLS report, if there were a BLS report, would be bad, because the payrolls processor ADP reported this week that the private sector shed 32,000 jobs in September. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg estimated that 53,000 jobs were added last month, which is still pretty meager. The workforce analytics company Revelio Labs put the gain slightly higher, at 60,000 jobs. The “outplacement” consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas—these are the folks who help your boss fire you—reported that hiring was weaker in September than at any time since 2009. As the economic forecaster Bob Dylan observed in “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Good point! But what Antoni didn’t grasp (or didn’t want to grasp) was that withholding BLS jobs data leaves business and the Fed more stranded than releasing imperfect BLS jobs data. We’re experiencing that void now.
But what if you could keep the government shut down long enough to prevent BLS from collecting the data it will need to report the consumer price index on October 14? Then the Fed would have less information than otherwise to judge whether inflation is too high! The Fed’s preferred inflation metric is the Commerce Department’s personal consumption index, or PCI, not the CPI, but the PCI depends on BLS data, and anyway the next PCI release won’t come out until after the Fed makes its decision. A delay in the CPI might also mean Social Security recipients will receive a lower cost-of-living adjustment, which I presume Trump would judge a plus.
This last point hasn’t escaped notice from Senator Elizabeth Warren. On Thursday, she wrote Russell Vought, the OMB director and Project 2025 architect, to demand that the jobs number not be held hostage to the government shutdown. “According to experts,” Warren observed, “the data for Friday’s report is likely ready for public release.” Indeed, as former BLS Commissioner Bill Beach said in an interview this week, “The jobs report is likely written in final draft and could be released on Friday, should the agency reopen.” If it’s written in final draft, why wait? “The administration is choosing not to release Friday’s jobs report,” Warren concluded.
In the realm of economic analysis, no news can easily translate into bad news. If the Trump administration has no official reason to withhold the September BLS jobs numbers during the government shutdown, and yet is withholding them anyway, that raises a legitimate suspicion that the BLS numbers are worse than what we’re hearing from Bloomberg’s panel of economists, ADP, Revelio, Challenger, Gray, and others. The stock market clearly hasn’t thought this through, because on Friday it was up. The stock market has been generally delusional of late; it appears to be delusional on this point too. Anyway, until I see the BLS data for September, I’ll assume the economy is in worse shape than we know.
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