The government shutdown is again making it it hard to answer a critical question: How is the U.S. job market doing?
The impasse in Congress over funding has delayed a closely-watched report on the labor market for the second month in a row.
Without that official jobs tally, the available signals are mixed. This week, a big payroll processing company reported an uptick in October hiring, for example. But a consulting firm that tracks pink slips noted a big surge in layoff notices.
Policymakers typically look to monthly surveys from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the broadest and most accurate snapshot of the job market. But BLS number-crunchers have been furloughed for more than five weeks, so the September and October jobs reports have not been published.
"Due to the government shutdown, this is a challenging time to give an economic outlook speech," Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook told an audience at the Brookings Institution on Monday. "The longer the shutdown lasts, the more data could be disrupted."
But Cook insisted she and her colleagues are not "flying blind." They look to private-sector data for signals about hiring and firing, as well as anecdotal reports from a wide range of business contacts.
People are feeling uncertain
Workers and people looking for work do the same, as they form their own impressions of the job market — and there are signs of concern.
A measure of employee sentiment from the job-search website Glassdoor found workers are less confident about the availability of jobs now than they've been in the last three months. Glassdoor users who received a job offer in October were less likely to turn it down than the previous month, suggesting that workers feel they have less leverage in the current market.
"October's decline in employee confidence reflects how quickly economic uncertainty can ripple through the workforce," said Glassdoor's chief economist Daniel Zhao. "The government shutdown and mounting layoff fears have clearly shaken employee sentiment."
A number of high-profile companies such as Amazon and UPS have announced widespread layoffs in recent weeks, which likely weighs on workers' confidence.
The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas says U.S. businesses announced plans to cut 153,074 jobs last month — the worst October in more than two decades. Tech firms and warehousing companies reported some of the biggest downsizing plans.
"Those laid off now are finding it harder to quickly secure new roles, which could further loosen the labor market," says Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer at the firm.
The labor market still shows mixed signals
State tallies of new unemployment claims have remained relatively stable, however, suggesting that there hasn't been a big spike in overall layoffs yet.
On the positive side, ADP, which handles payroll for more than 26 million U.S. employees, says it counted an increase in the number of private-sector employees last month, after two months of decline.
"Private employers added jobs in October for the first time since July," says ADP's chief economist Nela Richardson.
At the same time, Richardson notes that "hiring was modest relative to what we reported earlier this year."
Official data from the BLS had also shown a slowdown in hiring during the summer, before the government shutdown halted its reporting. Employers added just 22,000 jobs in August — the last month for which official numbers are available.
Some of the drop in job growth could be the result of having fewer available workers. Some 10,000 baby boomers retire every day. And the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement likely means there are fewer foreign-born workers in the job market.
While the unemployment rate inched up to 4.3% in August, that's still quite low by historical standards.
"The slightly rising unemployment rate indicates the labor market is softening, but only modestly so," Cook said Monday.
She cautioned however that unemployment rates for young and African American workers jumped more sharply over the summer, which could be a warning sign. The jobless rate for workers aged 20-24 in August was 9.2% while the unemployment rate among African Americans was 7.5%.
"This is sometimes called a "two-speed" economy," Cook said, "when the well-off are doing well, while [lower-income families] and vulnerable households are not."
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