By Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON, Dec 15 (Reuters) – The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday releases its long-awaited combined employment reports for October and November, but a number of key details will be missing after the government shutdown prevented data collection, including October’s unemployment rate, resulting in the first-ever gap in that critical data series.
The longest shutdown in history also forced the BLS to cancel the release of October’s Consumer Price Index report. It is unclear what components of the October CPI will be available when the report for November is published on Thursday.
No survey of households was conducted to get information on employment status, among other details, required to calculate the unemployment rate for October. Government workers also did not make visits to supermarkets and stores to get the information needed to calculate the CPI and other price measures for October.
The employment and CPI reports are crucial for Federal Reserve officials making decisions on monetary policy as well as for investors, businesses and ordinary Americans trying to gauge the economy’s health. The BLS has said data for the household survey and October’s CPI cannot be collected retroactively.
Here is what to expect:
THE EMPLOYMENT REPORTS
The BLS canceled October’s employment report, but will instead incorporate the nonfarm payrolls and other details of the establishment survey for that month into November’s report.
The employment report is made up of two surveys, which are conducted during the week that includes the 12th of the month.
The establishment survey is the data source from which nonfarm payrolls, hours and earnings by industry are calculated. Employers submit their responses electronically and continued to do so during the shutdown, which allowed the BLS to calculate nonfarm payrolls for October when the government reopened.
The collection period for the November survey was extended, with extra processing time allocated. Economists expect the shutdown will have a limited impact on the quality of the October and November establishment survey data and even anticipate higher response rates than normal. The collection rate for September’s establishment survey was 80.2%, well above the average over the prior 12 months of 61.8%.
Aside from the shutdown, October payrolls were likely distorted by the departure of more than 150,000 federal employees who took deferred buyouts as part of President Donald Trump’s push to shrink the government’s footprint. Most of them dropped off government payrolls at the end of September.
A Reuters survey of economists forecasts nonfarm payrolls increased by 50,000 jobs in November. Payrolls rose 119,000 in September.
The inability to conduct the household survey during the reference period in October means there will be no unemployment rate reported for that month. This will be the first time that the government has failed to publish the unemployment rate since it started tracking the series in 1948.
Similarly, other household metrics including the labor force participation rate, employment-population ratio, number of people working part-time, duration of unemployment and demographics will not be available.
A full employment report for November will be published. The collection period for November’s employment report was extended, with more processing time added. Economists at Goldman Sachs said they expected limited impact from the shutdown on the quality of the November household survey.
“The BLS has pushed its reference week back by one week from November 2-8 to November 9-15 and began collecting responses one week later than intended,” they wrote in a note. “While collecting responses closer to Thanksgiving could modestly lower the survey response rate, the originally intended reference and interview weeks were unusually early and the new weeks align more closely with historical norms.”
A Reuters survey of economists forecasts the unemployment rate at 4.4% in November. The jobless rate rose to 4.4% in September from 4.3% in August.
THE CONSUMER PRICE REPORT
BLS collects price data through the month, primarily through physical visits to retailers and telephone calls. Nonsurvey data sources are used instead of survey data to make calculations for a few indexes. The BLS also said it was unable to retroactively acquire most of the nonsurvey data for October.
“Where possible, BLS will publish October 2025 values for these series with the release of November 2025 data,” the agency said. It added that while it was still evaluating “which series will meet publication criteria for October,” the BLS “expects the number of publishable indexes to be small.”
It said it would not publish the headline CPI number or the so-called core CPI, which strips out the volatile food and energy components, for October. “BLS cannot provide specific guidance to data users for navigating the missing October observations,” the agency said.
While the November report will be published, it will “not include 1-month percent changes for November 2025 where the October 2025 data are missing,” the BLS said.
Goldman Sachs warned of increased volatility in the CPI series, noting that “collecting prices only in the second half of the month could bias prices lower because goods prices typically decline sharply starting around the middle of November as the holiday sales season kicks off.”
It estimated the late collection could impose a drag of up to 15 basis points on overall November core CPI.
“That said, the lack of an October reading means that the drag could appear less pronounced on a sequential, two-month basis, and any drag on November prices would correspond to a commensurate boost to December inflation,” Goldman Sachs said.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Dan Burns and Andrea Ricci)
