The government is reopening after President Donald Trump signed a House-approved funding bill on Wednesday night, officially ending the historic 43-day shutdown. Yet the White House is warning that key economic reports skipped during the closure — including inflation and employment data — may never be recovered, potentially complicating upcoming Federal Reserve decisions on interest rates.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that “October CPI [Consumer Price Index] and jobs reports likely never being released” could leave policymakers “flying blind at a critical period.” The missing figures were expected to help shape the Fed’s approach to potential rate cuts in December.
The shutdown began Oct. 1 amid a partisan dispute over federal spending and the continuation of enhanced premium tax credits under the Affordable Care Act, which are scheduled to expire at the end of 2025. Those credits prevent steep premium increases for millions of Americans. The Senate is set to take up the issue next month within the broader spending plan.
As agencies resume operations Thursday, officials now say the data that was thought to be merely delayed may actually be permanently lost.
This would mark the first time monthly government statistics for the nation’s most watched economic indicators are skipped since tracking began. Furloughs at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) halted key surveys throughout October, leaving large gaps in economic recordkeeping.
The Current Population Survey — jointly conducted by the Census Bureau and BLS since 1948 — relies on monthly responses from roughly 60,000 households to produce the government’s official employment report. That survey simply did not take place during the shutdown. As Friends of BLS, an independent coalition of research and statistical groups, noted in a statement Wednesday: for the first time in over 900 months, core employment data was not collected from a representative U.S. sample.
Inflation tracking goes back even further — the national CPI was first published in 1921 — making a missing month unprecedented.
Even without that data, most experts still expect a policy move next month. A Reuters poll of 105 economists found that 80% anticipate the Fed will lower rates by a quarter point on Dec. 10 — its third cut in a row — bringing the federal funds target range to 3.5%–3.75%.
The Fed already trimmed rates at its October meeting despite the lack of official statistics, citing signs of a cooling job market and easing inflation pressures.
Some economists believe that direction remains justified.
“The general sense is the labor market still looks relatively weak and that’s one of the key reasons why we think the FOMC will continue to deliver that December cut,” Abigail Watt, U.S. economist at UBS, told Reuters.
Others are less convinced. Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, pointed out that prices for more than half of the items tracked in CPI are rising faster than 3%, still above the Fed’s 2% inflation target.
“This is the reason why it is difficult for the Fed to cut interest rates in December,” Sløk wrote Wednesday.
