The government is back open. Here’s what that means for economic data

By Alicia Wallace, CNN

(CNN) — The US government has reopened following its longest-ever shutdown, setting the stage for the eventual release of the gold-standard federal data that is crucial in analyzing the health and trajectory of the nation’s economy.

Data nerds (and government officials, and Federal Reserve policymakers, and business owners, and, well, everyone else for that matter), rejoice!

“It’s been like flying in fog without any instrumentation,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

However, expect some choppiness when the air starts to clear.

The very nature of the 43-day shutdown has created an unprecedented situation: Some datapoints were not gathered when they typically should have been, increasing the potential for big holes in what’s expected to be already messy data.

What major economic reports are outstanding?

Since the government was dark for the entirety of October and the first dozen days of November, several reports that included data collected in September and scheduled to be released in the ensuing weeks were not delivered (with the exception of the Consumer Price Index), nor was data collected for October (we’ll get to that here shortly).

One of the first reports expected to be released could be the September jobs report, which was due October 3.

“I think it’s sitting on the shelf and just needs to be released,” Zandi said. “Maybe dust [the report] off and produce a press release; but I think it should be ready to go.”

It’s possible that the September jobs report could be released as soon as next week, Kevin Hassett, the White House’s top economic adviser, told reporters Thursday, noting that the report has “already been cooked” (or ready for release).

Other major reports in the wings – likely in various stages of completion – include September data on real earnings, wholesale inflation, import and export prices, quarterly employment costs, annual consumer expenditures, retail sales, gross domestic product and consumer spending.

When will they be released?

That remains to be seen.

The leading statistical agencies are in the process of updating their schedules for economic releases (a calendar set in place more than a year ago).

However, it’s not as simple as plugging reports into different dates. Several releases are reliant on data from other series. For example, CPI and Producer Price Index data points feed in to the Fed’s favored inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, which in turn feeds in to GDP.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday posted a placeholder link where revised release dates will be posted. As of Friday morning, it had yet to be updated.

On Friday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis – the statistical arm of the Commerce Department that estimates GDP and produces data on topics such as income, spending, foreign trade, and state and local economies – announced it is “working to update its schedule of economic releases” and is consulting with the Census Bureau, BLS and other suppliers of data used to produce the BEA’s indicators.

Each economic data series will be affected differently by the shutdown, depending on how, when and from whom the data is collected, said Erica Groshen, a former BLS Commissioner who serves as senior economics adviser at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Still, she noted, expect the BLS and other agencies to prioritize Principal Federal Economic Indicators, which are about three dozen major statistical series used to describe the condition of the US economy. (The jobs report, CPI, PPI, and PCE are among these. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, for example, is not).

Will we ever see the October jobs report?

As it stands now, October 2025 could very well amount to a “lost” month of data – or close to it.

During the shutdown, the nation’s statistical agencies were run by skeleton crews as the actions of collecting, analyzing and disseminating data were suspended – disrupting finely tuned processes that have underpinned major economic reports for decades.

For example, the jobs report is composed by two surveys: one of businesses and one of households. The establishment survey is primarily automated and relies upon online portals for businesses to submit their information such as workforce levels and pay. The household survey, on the other hand, is largely conducted via telephone and in-person visits.

“It’s very hard to ask people what their situation was five weeks ago, and it’s bound to be unreliable,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon. “I think part of the employment report for the month of October will be lost forever, and we will only get the data that is submitted by companies.”

The household survey is what’s used to generate labor force estimates and the unemployment rate, and since that wasn’t conducted in October, “we’re going to get half the employment report,” Hassett said on Thursday. “We’ll get the jobs part, but we won’t get the unemployment rate.”

The lack of a complete monthly employment snapshot isn’t ideal when the US labor market entered the shutdown on seemingly shaky ground; however, a rough picture of the trajectory could still be assembled using the payroll estimates combined with a smattering of private hiring data as well as state-level unemployment filings and layoff notices, wrote Mike Reid, senior US economist for RBC in a note Thursday.

October inflation data likely to be quite opaque

The visibility on inflation data for October will be “particularly bad,” Reid noted.

Two-thirds of the pricing data that feeds in to the CPI is collected by in-person visits to brick-and-mortar stores, Reid said. Wholesale-level prices also were not collected in October for the Producer Price Index.

That will then ripple through to the PCE price index, where about 90% is constructed from CPI and PPI inputs, he added.

“Unlike the labor market, there are few (if any) reliable alternatives to the CPI report,” he said. “Absent the CPI and PPI reports, it’s hard to gauge inflation’s trajectory.”

And if the October inflation data is released, it could pose a “serious data quality issue,” as it would likely lean more heavily on imputation, a methodology that utilizes a variety of existing datapoints to capture missing information.

“But we know that already when the statistical agencies have all the data available, there’s a big degree of uncertainty, and sometimes the numbers are not statistically significant,” EY-Parthenon’s Daco told CNN. “So, with even less data, the statistical significance of these numbers is likely to drop even further.”

What about November data?

The shutdown lasted through nearly half of November, meaning that this month’s data also will not emerge unscathed, economists said. However, they also fully expect all major reports to be released.

There’s a greater likelihood that inflation data will have a higher level of imputations, noted RBC’s Reid. The timing and staffing levels of returning BLS employees also could impact the collection of data, including the household survey for the jobs report, said former BLS Commissioner Groshen.

“BLS has fewer resources this time, because it is down 20% in its staffing, one-third of its leadership positions are vacant, and it’s possible they had even more people quit during the course of the shutdown,” she said, referencing the Trump administration’s large-scale layoff of federal workers earlier this year via the Department of Government Efficiency.

Still, while it’s possible that the surveying of households in November could include questions for October, it’s unlikely, she said, noting current staffing levels and the heft of the data backlog facing statistical agencies.

“There’s a very highly orchestrated way that those interviews are conducted, so just even running surveys simultaneously is problematic,” she said. “I would not be surprised if the Census Bureau and BLS just decided that they can’t run the October [household survey] again.”

If that’s the case, it’s possible that the BLS could estimate the October unemployment rate from the September and November data, she said.

We might not be back on track until 2026

“Noisy” reports aren’t out of the ordinary for major economic releases such as the jobs report. Large disruptions, including those considered relatively short term, have a way of leaving their mark on data for months (or, in the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, for years).

Entering into evidence are the October 2024 and November 2024 jobs reports.

In October 2024, a month impacted by two major deadly hurricanes and massive labor strikes, the initial employment snapshot showed a net gain of just 12,000 jobs – a far cry from September’s 223,000-job gain.

It was also a one-time blip.

After striking workers and weather-waylaid employees went back to work in November, the jobs report for that month showed a surge of 227,000 jobs gained.

When the October 2025 jobs report is released, it’s expected to show significant job losses – perhaps to the tune of 1.5 million jobs, RBC’s Reid estimates – largely because of federal workers who were not on payrolls.

And, with the shutdown ending during the week that includes the 12th of the month – the period the BLS uses to tabulate employment – the November jobs report should capture the return of those employees and contractors to payrolls.

Still, the shutdown gummed up the nation’s statistical machinery, and it could take a couple of weeks for everything to get sorted out and running smoothly again.

“It’ll likely be the February period, where we get the January data, before we get our first real clean look at the US macroeconomic data,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM US. “So, there’s a price to be paid there in terms of the quantity and quality of the data that we’re going to get until early winter 2026.”

Wall Street is bracing for impact

The privately produced data provided a sense of what the federal data could show; however, if those expectations are dashed, there is potential for wide swings in the markets, said Zandi, of Moody’s Analytics.

“If they hit the mark, and that’s what they show, then no harm, no foul,” he said. “If, though, the numbers come out and vary from what we expect – either on the upside on the downside – then that may call into question the Fed policy that’s been done since the shutdown.”

US stocks had their worst day in a month Thursday and were lower Friday as traders digested news that the government had reopened. Investors braced for weeks’ worth of data set to be released in short order.

“I say this only half-jokingly: Maybe because the government is opening up again, the market took a dive,” economist Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research told CNN’s Matt Egan. “When the government was shut down we could believe whatever we wanted to believe. Now we need to be data dependent and that may not be as much fun.”

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