The Bureau of Labor Statistics will not release January employment data this week due to the ongoing shutdown.
More concerning: the agency’s pause on collecting February inflation data, which “has greater potential for lasting damage,” David Wilcox, an economist with Bloomberg Economics and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Semafor. “Price collection for the CPI should be happening right now and isn’t.”
He added that “if that persists more than a few days, the reliability of the February reading will be compromised.”
That matters for the Federal Reserve, where policymakers will lean on the data when they meet in March — and for trust in government data, which is already diminished.
The inability to “release that data consistently” feeds a “growing cynicism,” the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Emerson Sprick told Semafor.
That makes BLS’ job harder because “people don’t trust the data collectors,” Sprick said. “People don’t trust that BLS is going to use that data for good or that it’s going to be protected.”