On this particular Friday, at 8:30 a.m. ET, the Bureau of Labor Statistics was supposed to release the September jobs report.
Instead, the agency behind the market-moving release — data that has starkly become even more important, given economic uncertainty — is almost entirely dark due to the federal shutdown. There will be no more employment data until the government is funded again.
In the absence of official data, a constellation of previously reported federal data, private metrics, economists’ analyses, Federal Reserve indicators and job seekers’ lived experiences can help cobble together a rough snapshot of the current US labor market.
Here’s a look at what we know — and what we don’t.
Expectations
Consensus estimates, according to financial data firm FactSet, are that the economy added 50,000 jobs in September, a pickup from August’s preliminary 22,000-job gain, and the unemployment rate held pat at 4.3%.
Baked in to that estimate was an expectation that private-sector firms would add 62,000 jobs while the government (primarily the federal sector) would post a 12,000-job loss.
Pedestrians near the Capitol in Washington, DC, on September 17.
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