Shutdown Pushes Back January Jobs Report

Anyone waiting for Friday's snapshot of the US job market will be staring at a blank space instead. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says its January employment report won't come out as planned because the agency is partially shut down amid a budget standoff in Congress, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's the second time in five months the government's main numbers shop has gone dark, and the release will be pushed to an unspecified later date once funding is restored. House Democrats are blocking a set of spending bills over the Trump administration's hard-line immigration enforcement, leaving several agencies, including the Labor Department, without money.

The data for January jobs has already been gathered, but BLS staff can't finish the analysis and publication work while the agency is closed. The disruption piles onto an already stressed system still dealing with fallout from a six-week shutdown last fall that delayed releases across agencies such as the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, with some calendars pushed into April. That earlier lapse also prevented the collection of October inflation and unemployment figures, forcing the BLS to rely on backup methods that some economists warn will skew inflation readings for months.

The statistics office is also operating under longer-term strains: tight budgets, a hiring squeeze stemming from an earlier federal freeze, and a leadership gap since President Trump removed BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer last summer after alleging, without evidence, that the numbers were stacked against him. On Friday, Trump said he'll nominate Brett Matsumoto, a veteran BLS economist, to run the agency. The move was welcomed by data specialists who had worried he might opt for a political loyalist, the Journal reports.

Economists had predicted that the report would show 80,000 jobs were added in January, up from 50,000 in December, the AP reports. With the government jobs report delayed, economists and investors are expected to lean more on private-sector measures like payroll firm ADP's jobs report, but those cover only part of the economy. "You work with what you have, but it doesn't have the same depth and the same breadth that you get from the government data," UBS economist Alan Detmeister says. "You're groping in the dark a little bit more."