How's that BLS data coming along?

Marketplace

American Public Media

Business, News

4.6 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Our picture of the U.S. economy grows fuzzier each day the government shutdown continues. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which publishes the most reliable economic data, has been a barebones operation since the shutdown began. In this episode, how this month’s data from the public and private sectors may be affected. Plus: Recruiters give mixed takes on the job market, oil services companies are up against low prices and a supply glut, and streaming platforms set their sights on video games and podcasts.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, work with me on this one.
0:03.8	What we've got right now is Schrodinger's economic data.
0:08.1	It is simultaneously good and bad until we open the box.
0:14.7	From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.
0:27.8	I'm Kyle. I'm Kyle, Rizdal. It is Monday, today the 20th of October.
0:31.6	It is always to have you along, everybody.
0:33.8	I would start things off today by reading you a list of the economic data we are going to get this week.
0:39.2	But it would be a real short list, as you know, what with the government not governmenting low these past three weeks.
0:46.8	We will get a delayed version of the Labor Department's Consumer Price Index on Friday, good for the Federal Reserve as it gets set for its interest rate meeting
0:55.2	next week, and good for Social Security recipients whose cost of living adjustments depend on it.
1:01.4	But the damage being done to the government economic data machine is going to mean not great
1:07.2	things for the public and for the private data that this economy relies on.
1:12.7	Marketplace's Justin Ho gets us going.
1:15.1	Economists have reason to be concerned about upcoming government data releases, including the Consumer Price Index.
1:21.1	The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the BLS, which puts out the CPI, their operations have essentially been curtailed.
1:28.3	That's Liz Ann Saunders, chief investment strategist with Charles Schwab, a marketplace underwriter.
1:33.4	Saunders says the big concern is that government workers haven't been collecting price data this month.
1:38.4	Same goes for jobs numbers.
1:40.2	Once we get the October report, that is obviously not going to be clean data because the government was shut down for that period.
1:49.3	That's because even if the government finally cobbles together a report, the data might be less reliable, says Menzi Chen, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin.
1:58.0	The question is, how much of is it sort of backwards looking? How much is
2:02.2	just like related to other series that they think are correlated with the missing data?
	...

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