There’s no jobs report today. Here’s what it might’ve shown.
How was the job market in October?
Don’t look to the government to answer that question right now.
The shutdown of the federal government — now the longest-running in US history — has delayed two consecutive job reports from the Labor Department. October’s should’ve been released today, while September’s was originally scheduled for release on Oct. 3
Learn more: How the government shutdown impacts your money
That means the most recent comprehensive picture of the state of the labor market is from August, when data showed a 4.3% unemployment rate, a modest gain of 22,000 jobs, along with stalled hiring and separations.
Private data sources are available and referenced often, but economists have often said that those can’t totally replace government releases. The Labor Department’s monthly jobs report is a mammoth feat that pulls employment, hours, and wage data for workers on nonfarm payrolls from a survey of businesses while also providing data from a separate household survey that offers statistics on employment and unemployment.
Still, private data sources offer one key benefit right now: They’re still available.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who has called government labor data the “gold standard,” referenced the information drought in remarks last week, noting that available private data suggested not all that much has changed since the shutdown began.
“There’s just no story over the last four weeks,” Powell said in the Oct. 29 remarks. “It’s kind of stable. So you don’t see anything that says that the job market is, or really any part of the economy, is making a significant deterioration.”
For the most part, that was further affirmed in private labor data released this week, with reports showing a job market that continues to be sluggish — and perhaps slowing a bit further: Job postings are down, according to job search platform Indeed, and data on the pace of new jobs being added is mixed. The economy either added a meager amount of positions in October, according to private payroll processor ADP, or shed them by a small amount, workforce intelligence firm Revelio Labs found.
On the other hand, layoffs seem to be mounting — last month was the worst October for job cut announcements since 2003, according to a report released Thursday from the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. But the unemployment rate this year has so far been relatively stable amid a shrinking pool of available workers, and an estimate from the Chicago Fed, also released Thursday, further suggested that unemployment barely budged in October, hitting 4.36% compared to 4.35% in September.
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