Which Economic Reports May Be Cancelled Due To The Government Shutdown?

By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

(Click on image to enlarge)

Five Delayed Reports

Oct 1: Construction Spending
Oct 2: Motor Vehicle Sales
Oct 2: Jobless Claims
Oct 2: Factory Orders
Oct 3: Employment Situation (Nonfarm Payrolls Household and Establishment surveys)

The September jobs report (due Friday, October 3) should be easy to produce. The BLS workers likely had most of that report prepared with all of the data collected.

If the shutdown lasts through October 18, things get messy due to the way the BLS gathers jobs-related data.

Jobs Reference Period

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) the household survey’s reference period is the the 7-day period, Sunday through Saturday, that includes the 12th of the month. The household survey determines the unemployment rate.

The establishment (payroll) survey’s reference period is the pay period for an establishment that includes the 12th of the month. This is the nonfarm payroll report.

For the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), job openings have a reference period of the last business day of the month, whereas hires and separations cover the entire calendar month.

JOLTS will not be impacted because that data lags a month.

If the shutdown lasts through the 18th, the reference period (October 12-18) will be blown.

PPI Reference Period

For the Producer Price Index (PPI), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) gathers reference data on the Tuesday of the week containing the 13th of each month. The data is collected through a voluntary survey from thousands of businesses nationwide.

Monthly collection: Prices are collected every month for over 100,000 items from more than 25,000 establishments.
Data collection method: BLS field economists interview sampled businesses to identify specific products and services, and companies then report the prices for those items on a secure website or through other methods.

The PPI data collection for September is scheduled for Tuesday, October 14.

The BLS could decide to use a different reference date much easier than for jobs data.

CPI Is Continuous

For the US Consumer Price Index (CPI), the data gathering period is continuous throughout the entire reference month. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collects prices for goods and services over the course of the whole month, not on a single specific date.

Rent prices are an exception and are collected from one of six different panels of housing units every six months.

Fed Not Impacted

The Fed is funded differently and its reports will not be impacted.

Fed reports include Industrial Production, Treasury sales reports, the Beige Book, regional Fed reports, and the Fed’s balance sheet.

Cancelled Reports History

The BLS has cancelled reports—not just delayed them—during government shutdowns, though such cases are rare and typically tied to prolonged funding lapses that halt data collection.

The most notable example is the 2013 shutdown, when BLS suspended operations entirely from October 1 to October 16.

The partial shutdown 2018–2019 shutdown (December 22, 2018–January 25, 2019) was 35 days and the longest in history.

It covered only the January 2019 reference period (January 6–12) for the household survey, not two.

The December 2018 reference period (December 9–15) was safely outside the shutdown, and the February 2019 period (February 10–16) came after it ended.

No outright cancellation happened because the shutdown didn’t fully derail the data collection pipeline for that single reference period. However, they flagged the report with caveats about quality, as response rates dipped and federal worker classifications got messy.

Cancellation 2025 Discussion

The BLS’s roughly 2,000 employees are almost entirely furloughed, leaving only the acting commissioner to handle bare-minimum “essential” tasks like emergency notifications.

Data collection for the household survey (those critical phone and field interviews) grinds to zero during the reference week, and with no staff to chase responses or process scraps, we’d be staring at irreparable gaps.

I doubt the establishment survey fares any better.

Note: The above history and cancellation discussion was compiled with a Nice Chat with Grok.

Key Question

Here’s the key question: How Quickly Will Republicans Cave on Democrat’s Government Shutdown Demands?

Democrats’ Strategy

If Democrats can hang on for the rest of the month, healthcare premium notices will be sent.

Consumers can start shopping for next year’s coverage on November 1. Some ACA participants have already started receiving notifications about next year’s premium increases.

About 24 million people are enrolled in ACA (Obamacare) coverage. Roughly that many people will not be happy with sticker shock.

Republican Senate Concerns

“Even though none of us were supportive of the ACA to begin with, we can’t walk away from the people that have had no place else to go to get their healthcare coverage,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R., S.D.).

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is already discussing compromise, but only after Democrats end the shutdown.

But at this point, Democrats have no reason to go along.