Job seekers speak with recruiters at the SacJobs Career job fair on Thursday, November 13, 2025, in Sacramento, California, USA.
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to release nonfarm payrolls for September on Thursday, ending an official employment report blackout due to the government shutdown, albeit from an apparently rear-window perspective.
The announcement, scheduled for release at 8:30 a.m. ET, forecasts that public and private sector payrolls will increase by 50,000 jobs, up from an initial report of 22,000 in August, but still shows a weak labor market.
The report will be retrospective, but it will at least provide some guidance to investors, economists and Federal Reserve officials who have had to rely on much private proxy data during the record-long shutdown in Washington, D.C. September 5 marks the first BLS employment report since it was released in August.
“My sense is that both the September report and the revised figures for July and August suggest a slightly brighter outlook than is generally assumed, but that’s nothing to be too proud of,” RSM chief economist Joseph Brusuelas said. “The labor market is holding up, as is the economy.”
Data released a week after the government gridlock ends is expected to show the unemployment rate at 4.3% and average hourly wages up 0.3% for the month and 3.7% from a year ago, both figures unchanged from August, according to Dow Jones consensus forecasts.
Because the figures are from September, they may be of little help to policymakers trying to navigate a difficult situation and may be ignored by markets. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently described the situation as “driving through a fog” and warned against considering further guaranteed rate cuts while officials look for direction.
One month’s worth of employment data will provide some clarity, but visibility will remain limited.
“Pervasive uncertainty”
The BLS on Wednesday updated the release date for the data points it generates.
The bureau will not release the October employment report separately, but will postpone the November employment report from its original release date of December 5 to December 16, and will include it in the November employment report. Unemployment rates for October will not be released because household data cannot be collected by the BLS. Similarly, the Recruitment and Turnover Survey will be released on December 9th, covering September and October.
The BLS released its September Consumer Price Index report on October 24 precisely because it is used as a benchmark for Social Security cost-of-living adjustments.
“The economy is in turmoil in a time of widespread uncertainty,” Brusuelas said. “Due to the long closure period, I don’t think we will have accurate information about the labor market situation until early February.”
Nevertheless, other data, such as private payroll statistics released by ADP and layoff announcements from employment agency Challenger, Gray & Christmas, and a number of other indicators, provide clues about the current state of the labor market.
Indeed, in a speech Monday, Fed Director Christopher Waller rejected the idea that the Fed doesn’t have enough data to make decisions.
“Policymakers and forecasters are not ‘flying blind’ or ‘in a fog,'” Waller said in a speech advocating for a rate cut in December. “More data is always good, but as economists, we are skilled at using all available data to make predictions.”
Based on the data released so far, Goldman Sachs sees a above-consensus forecast of 80,000 jobs being created in September, but a decline of 50,000 jobs in October, largely due to the expiration of the federal government’s retirement deferral program due to job cuts related to Elon Musk’s Office of Government Efficiency.
“While we do not expect the Bureau of Labor Statistics to release October unemployment figures, we estimate that the unemployment rate likely rose, reflecting upward pressure from government shutdown-related furloughs and an increase in a broad measure of labor market slack,” Goldman economists Lonnie Walker and Jessica Linders said in a note.
Thursday’s report will include headline numbers for September, as well as revisions for July and August. Mr. Bruelas and Goldman economists both said they expect these numbers to be higher than previous numbers.
