Hey, raise your hand if you're excited to get the jobs data tomorrow, huh?

Yeah, not so fast.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rdall. It is Wednesday, today 19 November. Good as always to have you along, everybody.

We are going to begin today with the calendar. We had been expecting the Bureau of Labor Statistics to grace us with the monthly September unemployment report tomorrow, six or so weeks delayed.

Thank you, government shutdown.

Alas, that is not to be.

The BLS told us this morning, not only are we not getting that September data tomorrow, the October data, the part of it that they can pull together anyway, and the November data isn't going to be ready until mid-December. None of that is good news in any way, shape, or form. So we've done what we do when we need a little bit of perspective. We've called Heather Long. She's the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. Also, as you know, a Friday regular here. Heather, it's good to have you on.

Great to be here with some data. Well, or not. What do you make in the news? First of all, that the October report's going to be delayed. And some of that data may not ever show up. What was your first reaction? Honestly, my first reaction was we're going to get more than I thought we were going to get.

So no unemployment rate, but at least they're going to try to do the business survey,

the establishment survey that gives us a little bit of information.

And I'm in the belief something is better than nothing.

Well, fair enough, I suppose, at this particular moment, let me ask you, though, as I do sometimes,

and you don't always like it, to put yourself in Jay Powell's shoes, because the chair now is going to be running this meeting on 9, 10 December without data that he thought he was going to have, right?

The next installment that we're going to get from the good people at the BLS doing the hard work is going to be after that meeting.

So what do you think the Fed's going to do now?

Well, it seems like they're going to say we're still in this fog, and our best option is to stay put until the fog lifts.

And I was, I've been one of the economists saying I think they need to cut,

but honestly, I am a little bit more sympathetic. It doesn't really make that much difference

if they have to do the next interest rate cut in January versus December. Maybe that is right

to hold a little bit for more data. Well, you know, that's interesting because it makes me think of

this, this word choice that we're starting to see a lot, which is a skip, which is to say they skip a meeting and don't do anything and wait until January, or a pause, which implies longer. Do you have, do you have thoughts on that? I would be surprised if they call it a pause, because you're right. that's a big mindset shift.

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