White House: October Employment and Inflation Reports "Probably Never" to Be Released

The six-week-long U.S. government shutdown crisis has triggered a chain reaction, with its impact on the economic governance system showing unprecedented destructive power.

According to the Wall Street Journal, on November 12 local time, White House press secretary Levitt stated that due to the long-term closure of federal agencies, two important reports on October inflation and employment "probably never" will be released. This is the first time the White House has raised doubts about whether the employment report for October can be released.

"All economic data that should have been released will be permanently damaged," Levitt blamed the shutdown on Democrats, claiming it led the Federal Reserve policymakers to make blind decisions during a critical period.

It is worth noting that later that evening, President Trump officially signed the temporary funding bill passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives. The federal government "shutdown" incident, which started on October 1 and lasted 43 days, setting a record for the longest in American history, officially ended.

This governance crisis, triggered by partisan political games, has severely impacted multiple areas of people's livelihood, including food assistance, health insurance benefits, and civil aviation transportation.

The inflation and employment reports are key references for the Federal Reserve in formulating monetary policy, and their data quality directly affects major decisions such as interest rate cuts. According to reports, the absence of official economic reports recently has led economists and investors to rush to find other clues, including a series of private sector reports and estimated data.

These non-official information shows that U.S. job growth remains weak, and layoffs may increase. Several large enterprises cutting tens of thousands of white-collar positions also confirm this trend. Thousands of government workers who had delayed resignation arrangements under the Trump administration only officially left in October, and this factor is expected to lower the overall employment data for that month.

Looking back at the last available federal data, the unemployment rate in August was 4.3%, with employers adding 22,000 jobs, continuing the trend of a significant slowdown in job creation since early this year. Previously, it was revealed that the Trump administration attempted to weaken the signals of weak employment through methods such as adjusting the statistical口径, to create a more reasonable policy environment for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.

Regarding the subsequent arrangements for data release, the White House refused to provide further information. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has also not yet explained when it might begin processing the backlog of important economic reports, nor has it specified which reports might be affected by the government shutdown.

The Wall Street Journal pointed out that after the government reopens, BLS is expected to quickly release the backlog of September employment reports because the data collection for that report was completed before the shutdown began on October 1, originally scheduled to be released on October 3.

However, the release of October data faces challenges, with the core issue being that government employees were completely unable to conduct statistical collection work during the shutdown.

Nevertheless, some data such as employment creation and wholesale prices may be salvaged, as companies will directly provide some data to the BLS. However, according to analysts tracking the government statistics system, other important indicators such as consumer prices are difficult to reconstruct afterwards.

For employment data, it may be difficult to trace whether people had jobs last month. The household survey used to calculate the unemployment rate mainly conducts interviews by phone.

On the inflation side, government price investigators failed to track price changes on time. "You can't go into Costco in mid-November and figure out the price of an item in October," wrote Erica McEntee, the former director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who was fired by Trump this summer for "unattractive" employment data, on social media. She believes that the October inflation report "can't be released."

In fact, before Levitt made these remarks, many analysts had different expectations: although the data sources for the October inflation report might be less than usual, the Bureau of Labor Statistics would still try to release some data.

"I still believe that the Bureau of Labor Statistics will do everything possible to compile the October Consumer Price Index (CPI) report... even if the report is based on a much smaller sample," said Shiref (Omair Sharif), an analyst at Inflation Insights, in a report earlier this week.

Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1848659797813385/

Statement: This article represents the views of the author himself.