Shutdown Means No Jobs Report

The government’s report on the September jobs situation is a casualty of the government shutdown.  Here’s what the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) website says:

Special Notice:

This website is currently not being updated due to the suspension of Federal government services. The last update to the site was Monday, September 30. During the shutdown period BLS will not collect data, issue reports, or respond to public inquiries. Updates to the site will start again when the Federal government resumes operations. Revised schedules will be issued as they become available.

BLS has collected the data for the September jobs report and will presumably issue it once the shutdown ends.  A prolonged shutdown, however, threatens the collection of data for subsequent reports.

The non-governmental ADP National Employment Report of earlier this week estimated that private-sector employers added 166,000 jobs in September; ADP revised down its estimate of employment growth in August from 176,000 to 159,000.

Although the ADP report and the official report can diverge significantly on a month-by-month basis, they tend to track private payroll employment reasonably closely over longer periods.