The private sector shed 32,000 jobs in September, a report from showed.
But that snapshot of employment that arrived on Wednesday is likely all we’ll get in the near term, despite the scheduled release of the monthly jobs report from the government this Friday.
The is expected to delay the Labor Department report, leaving more questions about the health of the economy.
said the jobs report from the government, which comes out the first Friday of each month, is the “most important economic data release in the world. Period.”
Those monthly updates on the health of the American labor market are closely watched by investors to understand how the economy is changing.
“Billions of dollars of investment sort of shift on this report,” Sojourner said. “It’s not perfect. It’s an estimate. It’s incredibly challenging to measure the 160 million, roughly, jobs in the economy in real time.”
But he said it’s the best available information at the time it’s released.
And the shutdown-induced delay in the release of the jobs data “clouds everyone’s view of the economy.”
“Everybody is making high-stakes decisions with sort of worse information, worse visibility into what’s happening around them,” said Sojourner, who works for the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
The government report is more robust and detailed than the jobs report released by ADP, which is based on payroll data from its client companies.
Bankrate said the ADP report is “as good as it’s going to get for a while.”
“But it is wholly inadequate,” he said. “And that’s not to be derisive or critical of the ADP data. But it’s just not the same.”
The ADP report also noted that there was a loss of 3,000 jobs in August, revised down from a gain of 54,000 jobs that month.
Meanwhile, in September to the lowest level since April, according to a new report from The Conference Board.
And a government report that was released before the shutdown hit – the monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, or – showed nearly identical levels of hiring and job separations.
“Hiring has essentially ground to a virtual halt,” Hamrick said. “And let’s be very specific about that. That’s not that hiring is not occurring. But we’re talking about payroll gains.”
American employees continued to enjoy near-record-high job security, with the in August at just 1.1%.
But the , 3.2%, also remained in a range that is the lowest in over a decade.
The last monthly jobs report, which was released Sept. 5 and covered the month of August, showed U.S. employers .
The next round of , set to arrive on Oct. 15, could also be in jeopardy if the shutdown isn’t resolved.
And the Federal Reserve, which last month out of concerns over the softening jobs market, meets again at the end of October.
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Hamrick said the Fed will make a decision whether to lower interest rates or keep them steady, regardless of the shutdown or possible delay of economic data from the government.
But he said delays could create headaches for the Fed and undermine economic clarity at a crucial time.
Sojourner said this week’s employment and consumer confidence reports tell the same economic story: The labor market is cooling, wage growth is fading, and the unemployment rate is rising.
“The economy is still in a decent state, but the momentum is in a bad direction,” Sojourner said.