The Great Federal Re-Opening of 2025, When Will We Have Reports?

The CPI report for October may be cancelled. Here’s an expected schedule.

It’s highly likely Government reopens this week. So when will we have reports?

Please consider the MNI report on The Great Federal Data Re-Opening Of 2025: Frequently Asked Questions

CPI

• Our thinking here is partly based on the 2013 experience, but also largely on interviews our Policy Team conducted with two ex-BLS commissioners available here and here.
• CPI: Starting with CPI: the BLS already released September data (albeit delayed), but as of this week will have postponed the October release. It looks unlikely that the BLS will be able to release October CPI at all: most of the survey and otherwise data required was not collected in the month.
• For November’s report, it’s a close call whether the data can be released. For example, it is questionable whether BLS field agents can collect 4 weeks of data in half that time. It will be a judgment call on the part of the BLS whether to publish their best estimate of November CPI. If they do, it is possible they linearly
  divide the price index growth over 2 months, to fill in a number for Oct CPI and Nov CPI. This would be unprecedented so we’re not sure what the data set would look like.
• Overall, CPI data look like they will be less robust than usual until at least the December report out in Jan.

Nonfarm Payrolls

• The BLS is probably in a position to start releasing data as soon as Friday, namely the September nonfarm payrolls report which by all accounts was already in hand as the shutdown began. Indeed we wouldn’t be surprised by a Friday morning release though this could slip into early next week (per the 2013 template).
• For the October data, we could see a partial release. The establishment data are collected electronically, so the payrolls figures will be published. However, the household survey – which is used to produce variables including the unemployment and participation rates – was never fielded, and may never be.
• For November, again looking at the 2013 example, the BLS was able to publish October payrolls on Nov 8, exactly a week after its originally scheduled date. The 2025 shutdown may have concluded just in time to allow for a similarly limited delay this time (so a Dec 5 scheduled release may be pushed back to Dec 12).

Weekly jobless claims:

• The 2025 shutdown was different from 2013’s from a data perspective because back then, the Department of Labor continued to publish weekly claims data. This time, the DOL has released state-by-state data but analysts have been forced to come up with their own calculations for the national figure.
• In theory it should be quick and easy for DOL to start back up publishing jobless claims data on Thursday at 0830ET so we wouldn’t be surprised to see such a release – note that it’s the DOL itself and not the BLS that publishes the claims report. That said it’s sure to start getting back on the regular publication schedule by Thursday Nov 20.

Other Reports

• GDP: In 2013, this release was delayed from late October but only to Nov 7; we would expect to see the BEA pull it together by end-November.
• PCE: The PCE price reports of course depend on CPI (and PPI and Import Price) inputs so while a September release is likely to come around the same time as Q3 GDP, we’re not sure we will get an October PCE price report at all (whether the BEA compiles spending/income data without the deflators is another question).
• PPI / Import Prices: The BLS produced the import/export price data without much of a delay in 2013; PPI took longer, with September’s delayed from Oct 11 to 29 and October’s a week (Nov 14 to 21). Import/Export prices are largely composed of administrative trade data from other agencies though there is
  an economist field survey element too. The PPI data inputs are largely collected via firms’ electronic submissions to the BLS, being asked to report prices as of Tuesday of the week containing the 13th of the month, failing which a BLS economist calls them. As such October’s data may be less reliable than usual
  though we await the BLS’s verdict.
• Durable goods/inventories: See point above for how quickly the Census Bureau put this data together last time. This could be “doubled up” data for September and October for release in early November.
• Retail sales: As of this Friday we will have missed both the September and October releases. In 2013 Census got these together relatively quickly, with September out 2 weeks after originally due to be released and October delayed a week. It’s plausible that the September data could be out by end November, with the October data to follow shortly thereafter, though this could be a “double” release.

What Data Will the Fed Have for Its December 9-10 Meeting?

• The Fed should have the September and October Employment Report data in hand, though the latter could be truncated as noted above. The November report looks likely to come out just after the Fed meeting.
• Inflation is a different story. September CPI of course has been published, and the September PCE data should be in line to be produced by the BEA but with a lag – in 2013 it released the September data on Nov 8.
• That will probably be the last piece of major inflation data before the Fed meeting. As noted above, the October CPI report may not be released at all. The November data was scheduled to be released on the morning of the FOMC decision but that looks extremely unlikely now.
• Q3 advance GDP should be in hand, as should September/October retail sales.

Thanks to MNI for this expected schedule.

The key missing data is the CPI. So the Fed will have to wing it, looking at only half of its dual mandate.

What Will the Fed Do?

The Wall Street Journal reports The Fed Is Increasingly Torn Over a December Rate Cut

The path for interest-rate cuts has been clouded by an emerging split within the central bank with little precedent during Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s nearly eight-year tenure.

Officials are fractured over which poses the greater threat—persistent inflation or a sluggish labor market—and even a resumption of official economic data may not bridge the differences.

The rupture has complicated what looked like a workable plan less than two months ago, though investors think a rate cut at the Fed’s next meeting is still more likely than not.

When policymakers agreed to cut rates by a quarter of a percentage point in September, 10 of 19 officials, a slim majority, penciled in cuts for October and December. Cutting rates at three consecutive meetings would echo the downward adjustments Powell made last year and in 2019.

But a contingent of hawks questioned the need for further reductions. Their resistance hardened after officials reduced rates again in late October to the current range between 3.75% and 4%. The debate over what to do in December was especially contentious, with hawks forcefully challenging the presumption of a third cut, according to public comments and recent interviews.

Indeed, a key reason Powell pushed back so bluntly against expectations of such a cut at the press conference that day was to manage a committee riven by seemingly unbridgeable differences.

Whether officials will cut rates again at their Dec. 9-10 meeting is a tossup. New data could settle the debate. Some officials view the December and January meetings as largely interchangeable, making the year-end deadline feel somewhat artificial. Another possibility: pairing a December cut with guidance that sets a higher bar for further reductions.

The WSJ calls December a tossup.

The market disagrees.

With 28 days to go, CME FedWatch sees a 65.4 percent chance of a cut in December.

That’s down from 91.7 percent a month ago. But it’s up from 62.4 percent yesterday. Those numbers as of 10:21 PM Mountain on November 11.

I would not call this set of numbers a tossup.

We need to wait for the data, but a critical piece, the CPI, will be missing. Since the other half of the mandate (jobs) rates to be weak, it’s very likely the Fed will cut.