BURSTThe Trump administration will release a critical inflation report later this month despite shuttering the agency responsible for compiling key economic data during the government shutdown.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said Thursday it will release the September consumer price index (CPI) report on Oct. 24, more than a week after it was originally scheduled to be released.
The BLS has not produced or collected any economic data since government funding lapsed on Oct. 1, forcing policymakers and investors to use private-sector reports to assess the economy.
The Trump White House, like previous administrations, furloughed almost all BLS staff, who were not considered to be performing essential duties. The funding lapse prevented the BLS from releasing the September jobs report, which was due to be published two days after the shutdown began.
The BLS, however, will bring back workers to compile the September CPI report given its unique importance, the agency said. The report is used by the Social Security Administration to set the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for federal benefits, so further delays could compromise that process.
The government shutdown is the latest obstacle for the BLS after months of criticism from President Trump and upheaval at the agency after he fired the previous commissioner.
The president and his allies have accused the BLS, a nonpartisan agency staffed by career federal employees, of manipulating employment data to tarnish his economic record and hide severe job losses under former President Biden.
Trump, however, has provided no evidence to back up those claims, and has sought to cast regular revisions to BLS data and a recent string of bad jobs reports as proof of a conspiracy against him. The president fired former BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer in August after a particularly weak jobs report and major revisions to previous gains — under both him and Biden.
Economists and analysts across the ideological spectrum have condemned Trump's moves, saying it would be nearly impossible to manipulate BLS reports given the sheer number of different data points that must correspond to each other.