{"id":140898,"date":"2025-10-23T16:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T16:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/140898\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T16:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T16:29:08","slug":"missing-federal-jobs-report-leaves-oregon-employment-department-businesses-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/140898\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing federal jobs report leaves Oregon Employment Department, businesses in the dark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite delivering in past shutdowns, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said it was unable to provide the September jobs report because of the government shutdown<\/p>\n

For the first time in more than a decade, Oregon and other states lack federal jobs data they rely on to understand the health of their economies and labor markets month-over-month.<\/p>\n

Officials at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced earlier this month that they would not produce the September jobs report, which was due Oct. 3, because of the government shutdown that began Oct. 1.<\/p>\n

The agency uses two surveys each month to estimate the nation\u2019s unemployment rate and how many jobs the economy created each month and shares state-specific data with partner agencies in each state. On Oct. 15, the Oregon Employment Department reported that there would be no September jobs data to share from the roughly 7,600 Oregon businesses that answer the federal survey each month.<\/p>\n

Instead, officials at the federal labor statistics agency\u2019s\u00a0quarterly\u00a0wage and employment report<\/a>, which includes data providing employment trends and wages by industry through June. On Thursday, agency officials will share data from unemployment claims in the state that might offer a clearer picture of how labor markets are doing in Oregon.<\/p>\n

Previous shutdowns haven\u2019t stopped the federal labor statistics agency from issuing its reports, and only three shutdowns delayed them in the last several decades. During the October 2013 federal shutdown, September jobs data was delayed 18 days and released less than a week after the shutdown ended. During a shutdown that ran from\u00a0 Dec. 16, 1995, to Jan. 6, 1996, the December jobs report was delayed by two weeks, according to the D.C.-based nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cBusinesses want consistency and certainty from their government as they make long-term investment decisions. So do public policy makers, and without accurate, up-to-date data \u2014 data that we\u2019ve always had available \u2014 we simply can\u2019t quantitatively see how things are moving,\u201d said Nathan Buehler, communications director at Business Oregon, the state\u2019s economic development agency. \u201cMissing a single month isn\u2019t a catastrophe, but additional releases being missed would really start to erode public trust, and our ability to do any accurate economic analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Layoffs and hiring are low<\/p>\n

Typically data is collected and prepared to share with officials at the Federal Reserve and the White House at least a day before being published, or in this case, by Oct. 2, meaning the agency was within a day or two of being ready to publish when the government shutdown began.<\/p>\n

Officials at the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not respond to a request from the Capital Chronicle by Wednesday evening for more information about what specifically would have delayed the report.<\/p>\n

The ongoing government shutdown risks data collection for the month of October, which should be happening now. The next Oregon jobs report was previously expected to be ready by Nov. 19, according to Gail Krumenauer, a state employment economist.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump in August fired Erika McEntarfer, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, claiming she rigged the July jobs report to make him look bad. Figures in that report showed that the economy added 30,000 fewer jobs than anticipated in sectors heavily impacted by Trump\u2019s tariff policies. The report also revised downward employment growth from May and June that had previously been thought to be higher.<\/p>\n

Jobs reports and reports on private sector business growth going into September indicated sluggish job growth and persistent tariff-induced inflation.<\/p>\n

The August jobs report, the most recent published, showed Oregon\u2019s economy added nearly 7,000 non-farm jobs, mostly in health care, social assistance, hospitality and leisure and government. The largest job losses were in the wholesale trade sector.<\/p>\n

Despite the unemployment rate remaining low in August, payrolls showed a big slowdown in hiring and a decline in labor growth in part due to lower immigration and workforce participation, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said\u00a0at an Oct. 14 meeting<\/a>\u00a0of the National Association of Business Economists<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile official employment data for September are delayed, available evidence suggests that both layoffs and hiring remain low, and that both households\u2019 perceptions of job availability and firms\u2019 perceptions of hiring difficulty continue their downward trajectories,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n

The labor statistic bureau\u2019s quarterly report shows that there was a decline in Oregon of 3,800 jobs between the second quarter of 2025 and the same quarter in 2024, or a decline of less than half a percentage point. The private sector lost more than 11,000 jobs during that period and manufacturing lost nearly 7,400 jobs, while more than 14,000 private health care and social assistance jobs were added, a nearly 5% increase from the previous year.<\/p>\n

Between June 2024 and 2025, more than 7,000 government jobs were added. About 75% of those were in local governments, while 400 federal government jobs were lost.<\/p>\n

During the first half of 2025, 29,000 Oregonians worked for the federal government, accounting for about 1.5% of all jobs in the state. Most of these employees work in rural counties. In Sherman County in north central Oregon, 15% of all jobs were federal government jobs, and in eastern and southern Oregon\u2019s Grant, Harney and Lake counties, the federal government provides nearly 10% of all jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite delivering in past shutdowns, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said it was unable to provide the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[79,18,19,17,227],"class_list":{"0":"post-140898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-jobs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115424432437163610","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}