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For economists who follow the job market, the first Friday of the month is like Christmas morning. That's when the Labor Department usually delivers its report on jobs and unemployment. But all economists got this morning was a lump of coal. The report has been postponed by the government shutdown. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: If this were a typical Jobs Friday, Daniel Zhao would be sitting by his computer at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, eagerly waiting for the Labor Department's monthly report.
DANIEL ZHAO: Jobs report is every labor economist's favorite time of the month.
HORSLEY: But Zhao, who's chief economist at the job search website Glassdoor, will be empty-handed this morning. The Labor Department has furloughed its number-crunchers due to the government shutdown, so there will be no market-moving jobs tally today. Allison Shrivastava, who's an economist with the Indeed job listing site, doesn't know what she's going to do with herself.
ALLISON SHRIVASTAVA: It's going to be very odd to not be refreshing, refreshing, refreshing. I guess I'll just slowly sip my coffee. I'm not sure. Take the dog for an extra-long walk.
HORSLEY: Today's report was expected to show that employers added about 50,000 jobs in September. That would be a pickup from the 22,000 jobs added the previous month, but a big slowdown compared to the 240,000 jobs added this time last year. University of Michigan economist Betsey Stevenson says some of that slowdown is inevitable, given the Trump administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
BETSEY STEVENSON: I think everybody agrees that it's not the kind of job growth we had a year ago. We can't sustain job growth that's that quick and get rid of a lot of our foreign-born workers.
HORSLEY: Beyond the headline-grabbing jobs number, the monthly report packs a wealth of information about who's moving in and out of the workforce and which industries are hiring or cutting back. As job growth has slowed in recent months, many of the gains have been concentrated in health care, which tends to be insulated from the ups and downs of the broader economy. Shrivastava says while there haven't been a lot of layoffs, it's been a tough time for anyone trying to land a first job.
SHRIVASTAVA: Because there's been so much uncertainty, I think everybody, employers, and job seekers alike, are kind of just holding their breath and trying to hold out for as long as they can to make kind of a decision.
HORSLEY: Anyone hoping for clues in the jobs report today is out of luck. For now, businesses and policymakers just have to make their best guesses about which way the economy's going. That would be hard enough if it were coasting on a steady course. Stevenson says it's more challenging at a moment of transition.
STEVENSON: We're in a time where the economy's changing, and that makes data more valuable than it is in a regular time.
HORSLEY: It's like we're driving on a winding road on a foggy night, and our headlights and GPS just conked out. To be sure, there are other sources of information about the labor market - payroll processors, job search websites, the guy at the barber shop who seems to know everything. But economists agree there's no substitute for the reach of the federal government's number-crunchers, even if the Trump administration has cut their staffing and fired the commissioner who used to oversee the jobs report.
STEVENSON: There's no making up for a survey that captures tens of millions of employees. There's nothing that is close to that.
HORSLEY: Stevenson notes at least the September jobs information had already been collected, and it will be released once the government shutdown is over. But the government has also stopped collecting information for future reports, including the September inflation tally. And the longer the shutdown drags on, the harder it will be to catch up. Zhao is hoping for a quick resolution of the shutdown so he can go back to happily unwrapping the jobs report on the first Friday of every month.
ZHAO: We've got our fingers crossed. Yeah.
HORSLEY: Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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