:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-2242204178-d8f0de93e2414759bc465f7450934468.jpg "What’s The Inflation Rate In October? We May Never Know")
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Key Takeaways
- The White House said October’s inflation report is unlikely to be released.
- The ongoing government shutdown has closed the government’s statistical agencies, leaving critical economic data unreported.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is likely to skip a month of data collection for the Consumer Price Index for the first time in its history because of the ongoing government shutdown.
The Consumer Price Index, a widely watched gauge of inflation, is unlikely to be released for October, the White House said on Friday. The CPI is based on prices collected by an army of surveyors, who are currently on furlough and not working because of the government shutdown.
“Because surveyors cannot deploy to the field, the White House has learned there will likely NOT be an inflation release next month for the first time in history—depriving policymakers and markets of critical data and risking economic calamity,” the White House said in a statement.
What This Means For The Economy
Investors, government officials, and businesspeople rely on government data to assess the health of the economy. Those decision makers could be left in the dark about important economic trends as the government shutdown drags on.
If October’s data collection is skipped, it would create a remarkable gap in a dataset that spans more than a century. The BLS first published data for a national Consumer Price Index in 1921, including estimates for the national inflation rate dating back to 1913.
The CPI report is one of many pieces of economic data going unreported as the government’s statistical agencies remain closed. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have voted down one another’s bills to fund the government amid a dispute over health care policy. The White House statement deepened concerns among economists that the government will have to skip many of the monthly economic reports scheduled for release in October.
The ongoing data blackout is especially problematic for officials at the Federal Reserve who set the nation’s monetary policy with the aim of keeping employment high and inflation low. Although private companies, universities, and other groups produce their own measures of the economy’s health, the federal government’s statistics, based on extensive surveys, are considered by economists to be the most comprehensive and reliable.
The White House announcement occurred shortly after the BLS released its CPI report for September, showing price increases accelerated less than forecasters anticipated, although remaining well above the Federal Reserve’s target of a 2% annual rate. The BLS brought back some employees during the shutdown to publish the September CPI report since it is used to calculate Social Security annual cost-of-living adjustments to benefits.
