Survey-based data doesn’t exist because the surveys were not conducted in October. But data that companies electronically submitted exists.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

The jobs report, normally released on the first Friday of the month, is based on data from two big surveys: a survey of employers, which produces nonfarm payroll changes and wage changes; and a survey of households, which produces the unemployment rates, labor force data, participation rates, the number of unemployed, etc.

The first, the Establishment Survey, is based largely on electronic submissions by employers, and those continued during the shutdown, which started on October 1.

But the second, the Household Survey, is based on surveys sent to households, and as the government shut down on October 1, the survey in October was not conducted, and the data doesn’t exist; and it would be difficult to conduct a survey retroactively for October.

So the jobs report for October, which was originally scheduled for Friday November 7, will, when it is finally released, contain only the data from the establishment survey, and so it will have the number of jobs created/lost and wage increases; but the household survey data will not be available, and the data may never be available, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told reporters today.

Non-farm payrolls for October “will be able to be calculated but the household survey wasn’t completed, so we’ll get sort of half of the jobs report,” he told reporters. “Most everything else” can likely get worked out, “but we’ll never know what the unemployment rate was in October,” he said.

The November jobs report should be back on track.

The September jobs report, originally scheduled to be released on October 3, was not released because the government shut down on October 1, preventing the BLS from completing the report. But the data was collected before the shutdown and is all there. Hasset said today that the September report is essentially completed “and we might get that next week.”

The BLS has not yet published an updated release schedule.

Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the jobs report and the Consumer Price Index for October would “likely never” be released.

“All of that economic data [from the shutdown period] released will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period,” she said.

The shutdown “made it extraordinarily difficult for economists, investors, and policymakers at the Federal Reserve to receive critical government data,” she said.

Hasset’s comments today provided a clarification of what Leavitt had said, that part of the jobs report would be released – the nonfarm jobs – but that the unemployment rate and related metrics for October would never be known.

The October CPI report may also be permanently lost because a big part of the data wasn’t collected in October.

The September CPI report was cobbled together the best it could be during the shutdown by hastily recalled BLS staff, but was marred by a huge outlier in the biggest component, Owner’s Equivalent of Rent (OER), which accounts for 26% of overall CPI, 33% of core CPI, and 44% of core services CPI. Something went wrong, and given its huge weight, OER significantly pushed down the month-to-month readings of overall CPI, core CPI, and core services CPI, which I discussed here.

The six-week shutdown also did some damage to the economy, not just the data. It delayed projects and investments, cut off salaries, threw people out of work temporarily, delayed SNAP benefits, disrupted air travel, etc.

How much damage it did will take some months to sort out. Estimates are all over the place how it would impact Q4 GDP – we haven’t even seen Q3 GDP yet, thanks to the shutdown – but typically, as payments begin to flow again and projects and investments come off hold, and disruptions vanish, the economy bounces back with some catch-up effects in the following quarters.

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WOLF STREET FEATURE: Daily Market Insights by Chris Vermeulen, Chief Investment Officer, TheTechnicalTraders.com.