Jobs Report May Be a Shutdown Casualty

If the federal government does indeed shut down on Tuesday and remain closed for more than a day or two, data for unemployment and job creation in September is very unlikely to be released Friday, as scheduled.

The data, based on separate surveys of businesses and households, goes through an extensive process of analysis and review before it is released. And if Congress fails to reach a budget accord before the start of the fiscal year, the staff necessary for that will be furloughed, according to two administration officials who insisted on anonymity because the timing and duration of a shutdown remains uncertain.

Figures for weekly jobless claims, however, will be disclosed as usual on Thursday. That information is based on data collected from state agencies and is issued by the federal Employment and Training Administration, but doesn’t require the kind of number crunching necessary to produce the statistics on unemployment.

A memo prepared last month by the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erica L. Groshen, stated that in the event of a lapse in appropriations, “All survey and other program operations will cease and the public Web site will not be updated.”

But as the memo states, “The timing of any shutdown is critical.” The Labor Department notes that information on the Consumer Price Index was in fact released during the government shutdown in 1995, because it had already been prepared and there was a risk it could leak.

In the case of the employment data this time around, the statistics are still being reviewed, and the staff necessary to finish the preparation is much larger than it is for Consumer Price Index data, administration officials said.

The employment data, a key measure of economic growth, is followed more closely by Wall Street and investors these days than any other statistic that comes out of Washington. The Federal Reserve has tied any reduction in stimulus efforts to improvement in the labor market and a drop in the unemployment rate.

A healthy jobs report for September would increase the odds of tapering by the Federal Reserve when policy makers next meet in late October or mid-December. Conversely, anemic numbers for job creation could delay any easing of the stimulus.