The White House said Wednesday it was unlikely that key federal inflation and labor reports impacted by the government shutdown would be released.
“The Democrats may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system, with October CPI and jobs reports likely never being released, and all of that economic data released will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Economists had already expected that October's CPI data on inflation might not be released because federal workers who would have collected the data if the government had been open were not deployed after Oct. 1.
After Leavitt’s briefing, the White House clarified that September’s jobs report, for which data was collected before the government shut down, would be released once the stoppage ended. However, October’s jobs report, originally scheduled to be released last week, may not be.
The most recent jobs report issued before the shutdown began was the August jobs report, which was released on Sept. 5.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Department of Labor did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Leavitt’s comments.
Already, policymakers, market participants and economists expect a fog of data after the shutdown ends.
Opinions on how the lack of data could impact the Federal Reserve’s next monetary policy moves are mixed.
Some economists expect the Fed to make do with private data, such as the recently released private jobs report from ADP, which showed that employers added 42,000 jobs in October.
However, that slightly more optimistic private-sector jobs report came after a series of official jobs reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a shakier labor market.
The lack of government data “is a temporary state of affairs,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Oct. 29.
“If you ask me, ‘Could it affect the December meeting?’ I’m not saying it’s going to, but ... what do you do if you’re driving in the fog? You slow down,” he said.
