We finally got our dump of economic data, but it's coming with a giant asterisk.

We're discussing what to think about economic reports today on Motley Fool Money.

Today is Tuesday, December 23rd. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm your host, Emily Flippin,

and today I'm joined by Fool analyst Jeff Santoro and Jason Hall to weigh through a mess of

economic reports that have been released since the government shutdown and to discuss how

investors should think about the economy heading into 2026. Now, as I'm sure all investors are aware, due to

the government shutdown earlier this year, we had a pretty big gap in economic reports. From

October 1st to November 12th, key data like inflation and unemployment was not collected.

Now, as we head into the new year, we're finally getting some of this catch-up data, and

a lot of that data is coming

with asterix, which we'll discuss later. But to kick it off today, let's take the data that we do

have at face value and discuss what it means for consumer health and the broader economy. Jeff,

I want to start with you. The initial CPI reports from November had headline inflation around

2.7% year-over-year, Fr which is inching closer to that Fed target of 2%.

The employment reports released earlier this month showed payrolls rising nearly 64,000 in November

with a 4.6 unemployment rate. This is all to say, I know we'll get our next round of data in mid-January,

but that data is pretty reassuring to the market, right? We have slowly inflation, a relatively strong employment picture, and a general stabilization

in the cost of goods heading into the holiday season.

But the Federal Reserve did only lower rates by about a quarter basis point.

So if you were sitting on the board of the Federal Reserve, are you voting for a bigger

rate cut given this data?

No, I am not. In fact, I completely understand the Fed's uneasiness and caution here. Look,

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