When government shutdown ends, so will economic data blackout

The economic data blackout is almost over. Almost. The government shutdown, now in its 42nd day, led to a self-imposed data embargo, given that federal funding dried up for the agencies responsible for collecting and disseminating economic statistics. Frequent data releases slowed to a trickle, causing the private sector sources to fill in the blanks with data that isn’t as comprehensive as the government’s.

But not for much longer. A bipartisan spending agreement passed the Senate late Monday evening, which would reopen the government through Jan. 31.  The House is expected to swiftly approve it within days for President Donald Trump’s signature. Once that happens, the blockade on federal data will be lifted.

To start, the Bureau of Labor Statistics hasn’t been able to publish either the September or October jobs reports. The former is poised to be published swiftly once the federal government re-opens its doors. In 2013, the BLS published a delayed jobs report three days after a 16-day shutdown ended.

For the October employment report, it’ll either take several weeks to publish, if it ever sees the light of day at all. Most BLS staff were furloughed during the shutdown, and no data collection was carried out in the past month. Those surveys will be sent out to employers several weeks after they normally receive them, which could mean it won’t be as accurate.

The October inflation report presents a big challenge as well. BLS employees are tasked with gathering price data that make up the Consumer Price Index, which gets published in the second week of each month. Unless estimates are used, it’s hard to collect October prices several weeks after the fact.

“While the BLS could estimate the data that was missing, it seems highly unlikely that the agency would want to go down that path,” Michael Peppercorn,” a senior research strategist at Peppercorn, wrote in a blog post.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis within the Commerce Department was also forced to delay the release of the third quarter GDP growth scheduled for Oct. 30. A research note from BNP Paribas estimated it could be released two weeks later should the government reopen by Nov. 17.