A top White House economic adviser said Thursday that the government will be unable to determine what the unemployment rate was in October due to the shutdown.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told reporters that the government was not able to complete the household surveys used to determine unemployment data.
“The October employment report for the payroll side will be able to be calculated, but the household survey wasn’t completed,” Hassett told reporters.
“So we’ll get sort of half a jobs report,” he continued. “Most everything else, I think, we’ll be able to concoct the correct number after we look back, but we will never know what the unemployment rate was in October, because there wasn’t a household survey with that.”
President Trump signed legislation late Wednesday to reopen the government after a record-setting shutdown that lasted 43 days.
The most recent jobs report that was released before the lapse in funding began was the August jobs report, which came out Sept. 5. Hassett said the September jobs report had already been completed prior to the shutdown and will be released in the coming days.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt argued Wednesday the lack of data from October could leave decisionmakers at the Federal Reserve “flying blind at a critical period.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is without a Senate-confirmed leader after Trump earlier this year ousted Erika McEntarfer in the wake of disappointing jobs data from July. He later nominated and withdrew E.J. Antoni as a potential replacement.
