Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics produces the most reliable gauge of U.S. employment. But close watchers of the economy were left rudderless when the bureau withheld the data on Friday because of the federal government shutdown.<\/p>\n
The agency\u2019s measurements of wage growth, unemployment and job creation guide investors allocating capital and monetary policymakers<\/a> deciding whether the economy needs a boost.<\/p>\n Without the data, the outlook is foggy as hazards abound, so businesses could be even less willing to make decisions about the future<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this environment, the risk of slower growth stems from reduced visibility into the economy in an already uncertain period, and less so from the shutdown itself,\u201d wrote Mike Reid, a U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets, in a note to clients<\/a>.<\/p>\n The numbers are not likely to be released until the government reopens, but right now the forecast for employment growth is muted. Economists polled by Bloomberg expected that employers added 53,000 jobs last month, fewer than the 64,000 added<\/a> on average over the six previous months, before revisions. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimated<\/a> that the unemployment rate remained at 4.3 percent.<\/p>\n Other labor market indicators generated by the private sector have been downbeat. The payroll processor ADP estimated<\/a> that nongovernmental employers shed 32,000 jobs in September, while the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found<\/a> that companies\u2019 announced hiring plans so far this year were at the lowest level since 2009.<\/p>\n \u201cLabor market weakness is evident and it\u2019s accelerating, and what counts as a good jobs report is going to increasingly get revised down,\u201d said Andrew Flowers, chief economist at Appcast, a recruiting technology firm. \u201cThe main driver of that is labor supply contracting, particularly with immigration restrictions. But there\u2019s also evidence that demand is also weakening.\u201d<\/p>\n Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, sent a letter<\/a> on Thursday calling on the Labor Department to release the data despite the shutdown. According to William Beach<\/a>, a former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the monthly survey was collected and processed this week.<\/p>\n Shutdown or not, the government has already canceled some data collection, such as an annual survey of food security and another on farmworker wages, that will obscure understanding of America\u2019s economic health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics produces the most reliable gauge of U.S. employment. But close watchers…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":296438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[151340,13635,64,16859,12156,151339,420,151338,151341,139863,67,134777,16852,132,68,31965],"class_list":{"0":"post-296437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-adp-employer-services","9":"tag-bureau-of-labor-statistics","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-elizabeth","12":"tag-financial-planners","13":"tag-hiring-and-promotion","14":"tag-jobs","15":"tag-labor-and-jobs","16":"tag-labor-department-us","17":"tag-shutdowns-institutional","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-economy","20":"tag-united-states-politics-and-government","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-warren"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115359390259868354","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}