White House Says October Economic Numbers May Be Lost for Good — Blames Shutdown

With input from the Independent, FOX Business, the Hill, and MSNBC.

The White House is warning that some of the most closely watched economic stats in America may simply never see the light of day.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that October’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report and the October jobs report will “likely never” be released, pinning the blame squarely on the record 43-day government shutdown that froze much of the federal bureaucracy.

“The Democrats may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system, with October CPI and jobs reports likely never being released,” Leavitt told reporters.

Press Secretary added that all the economic data collected during the shutdown period will be “permanently impaired,” leaving Federal Reserve policymakers “flying blind at a critical period.”

CPI and the monthly jobs report are two of the key pieces of data used to track inflation, employment, and the overall health of the US economy. They’re also crucial inputs for the Federal Reserve as it decides whether to raise, cut, or hold interest rates.

Because much of the government was shut down from October 1, workers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) couldn’t conduct the usual surveys needed for:

• October CPI (inflation)
• October jobs data (including the unemployment rate)

A top White House economic adviser, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, said Thursday the government will only be able to produce “half a jobs report” for October.

“The October employment report for the payroll side will be able to be calculated, but the household survey wasn’t completed,” Hassett said. “We will never know what the unemployment rate was in October, because there wasn’t a household survey.”

In other words: they can estimate how many jobs were on company payrolls, but not how many people were actually unemployed or looking for work.

Not everything is lost:

• September jobs report: The data was collected before the October 1 shutdown, so the White House says it will be released “in the coming days.”
• August jobs report: That’s still the most recent public snapshot of the labor market — and it wasn’t flattering. The economy added just 22,000 jobs in August, and unemployment rose to 4.3%, the highest in four years.

Those weak numbers landed shortly after Trump abruptly fired BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer, accusing her of pushing “phony” figures when her July report showed 73,000 jobs added — which, awkwardly, turned out to be better than August.

BLS is now operating without a Senate-confirmed leader after Trump ousted McEntarfer and then nominated and later withdrew E.J. Antoni for the role.

With official October CPI and jobs data likely gone, economists and the Fed are turning to alternative sources:

• The Cleveland Fed’s “nowcast” currently estimates October CPI rose about 0.18% month-over-month and 2.96% year-over-year, with core CPI (excluding food and energy) up 0.25% on the month and 2.99% on the year.
• Private payroll processor ADP estimated the US added 42,000 jobs in October — better than August’s official number, but still soft.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell tried to calm nerves, calling the missing data “a temporary state of affairs,” but admitted it complicates things:

“What do you do if you’re driving in the fog? You slow down,” he said in late October, hinting that lack of hard numbers could make the Fed more cautious at its December meeting.

This isn’t just a technical headache — it’s political.

• Leavitt framed the missing data as the fault of a “Democrat shutdown,” warning it may have “permanently damaged” the statistical system.
• Critics see something more convenient: October’s jobs and inflation numbers were widely expected to be weak, and burying them avoids another round of bad headlines for the administration’s economic record.

Either way, one thing is clear: for October 2025, there may never be an official, government-certified answer to the simplest question in the US economy — how many people were working, and how fast were prices rising?