Flying Blind in Uncertain Skies

The federal government has gone into airplane mode, nine days and counting of radio silence. The first Friday of October came and went without the Bureau of Labor Statistics releasing its monthly jobs report. The radio silence leaves many in the dark, most notably the Federal Reserve, which is gearing up to decide on interest rates in a few weeks’ time.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that economic decision-making relies on clear economic data. And without the release of the latest jobs report, the Fed is effectively flying through a storm without radar.

But the government shutdown is the smaller problem.

Back in July, the BLS announced that it had reduced its collection of data used to calculate the Consumer Price Index by about 19%. This is part of a broader struggle to maintain reliable statistics, at a time when survey response rates are falling and budgets are shrinking.

Fast forward to August and President Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer just hours after the bureau revised down its initial job growth numbers in May and June to show the worst growth since the pandemic.

That’s about as textbook as shooting the messenger gets, except the messenger this time had a PhD and tenure.¹

Shortly after, the White House put forward a more politically aligned nominee to fill the role, a move that generated much criticism from economists. The nomination was withdrawn last week, and time will tell who the administration’s pick for the job will ultimately be. For now, the BLS hasn’t quite turned into the Ministry of Truth from Orwell’s 1984 just yet.²

In case you forget, the Ministry of Truth’s primary role is to perpetually rewrite historical documents so that the past always conforms to the current political party line. Any news that is no longer convenient is simply erased…a process they ironically call “rectifying.”

But this has prompted companies and investors to now wonder whether political interference will impact the reliability of BLS data going forward.

So, how bad could things get?

In response to her dismissal, McEntarfer warned that “serious economic consequences” could follow.

Indeed, there is a longer-term impact on the economy that we need to consider if companies and investors can no longer trust the BLS data to be independent and free from political motives.

It comes down to the fact that a good economic decision can only be made based on reliable data.

The data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is, as Fed Chair Jerome Powell put it, the “gold standard in data.” They inform us on key labor economics and statistics, including inflation (aka the Consumer Price Index), wages, and employment.

In times of economic uncertainty, it’s imperative for policymakers to stay informed and know which direction the economy is turning.

Without the latest information, even the Fed is left guessing.

We saw this last month, when interest rates were cut for the first time this year. Powell explained that forecasting the economy and determining the correct policy was particularly difficult.

After all, he said, the economy is in an “unusual situation” where the labor supply and demand are weakening at the same time, creating conflicting risks of higher inflation and rising unemployment. It’s the economic equivalent of being caught between a rock and a hard place, or as the ancient Greeks would say, between Scylla and Charybdis.³

That’s why a delayed jobs report hurts. Even the world’s most powerful central bank doesn’t have a crystal ball when the economy is this uncertain.

Without official figures, we can only rely on other data sources.

Payroll processing company ADP has calculated a loss of 32,000 jobs in September. A concern here is that economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected a job growth of 45,000. We hate to state the obvious here, but the numbers aren’t quite adding up.

The bigger issue here is that ADP is no substitute

for the BLS’s jobs report. ADP only tracks employment at private businesses, while the BLS covers both private employers and public sector hiring at local, state, and federal levels. It also doesn’t track all private businesses, only the ones that hire ADP to manage their payrolls. This means that it’s probably missing data from small businesses such as mom-and-pop shops.

This makes it all the more obvious just how crucial the BLS’s official numbers are right now.

It’s not just federal agencies that need the data. Businesses do as well.

In a nutshell, businesses use BLS data to set salaries, plan hiring, anticipate price changes, and benchmark their operational efficiency.

• HR teams use the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics to establish competitive pay for workers in various roles and regions.
• Decisions on whether to hire or expand are made by gauging how hard it might be to recruit or retain talent using insights from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.
• The CPI and PPI can help some businesses anticipate changes to their customers’ purchasing power or costs along the supply chain.
• Executives and investors will use the Productivity and Costs reports to measure the performance of their business against industry benchmarks.

Without reliable data to plan for their future, businesses may become more cautious, leading to a slowdown in investment and economic growth over time. And if you’re wondering why this is another reason to pump the brakes on rushing into the stock market right now, you’re not wrong.⁴

Investors and traders are also affected.

Financial markets run on trust. Trust that competition is fair and not manipulated by political interference. Trust that the government-released economic data actually reflects reality.

When that trust starts to wobble, so too does investor confidence. And if there’s one thing markets hate more than bad news, it’s uncertainty.

In the long term, this could lead to increased market volatility, as investors and traders struggle to assess risk and allocate capital efficiently.

So, where does this all leave us?

The verdict is still out about whether recent headlines surrounding the BLS are a sign of something worse to come.

Experts say there’s no clear evidence (yet) of political meddling affecting the numbers. But confidence, once shaken, can take a long time to recover. You can revise data, but you can’t revise credibility.

For now, as the government shutdown drags on, we’re all still flying blind. Don’t forget to buckle up.

Our Bonus Two Cents:

¹ One of its earliest appearances of this expression was in Sophocles’ Antigone, circa 442 B.C., where a sentry, afraid of the king’s reaction to his message, says, “No one loves the messenger who brings bad news.”

² In case you forget, the Ministry of Truth’s primary role is to perpetually rewrite historical documents so that the past always conforms to the current political party line. Any news that is no longer convenient is simply erased…a process they ironically call “rectifying.”

³ In Greek mythology, Scylla and Charybdis were two sea monsters located on opposite sides of a narrow strait of water. Sailors who tried to avoid Charybdis (a deadly whirlpool) would pass too close to Scylla (a multi-headed monster), and vice versa. The phrase “between Scylla and Charybdis” has come to mean being trapped between two dangers where avoiding one means falling victim to the other.

⁴ We say “another reason” because we’re thinking, among other things, about (a) how true impact of tariffs is only now being felt and (b) the S&P 500 P/E ratio currently being nearly twice its historical median and well above its long-term average. A P/E ratio of an individual share of stock of a stock index essentially reveals how much investors are willing to pay per dollar of earnings by that share  of stock or index. Thus, a market with a high P/E ratio may indicate one of two things: that investors are optimistic that earnings will grow in the future, or that the stock or index is overvalued.

©2025. DailyDAC^TM, LLC d/b/a/ Financial Poise^TM. This article is subject to the disclaimers found here.

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe for free to get access to exclusive bonus content, News to Know Now, this week featuring:

• America’s wealthiest are getting even wealthier
• OpenAI is now the most valuable startup in the world

Sign up to access our full newsletter: