Delayed Sept. U.S. employment report coming out next week

WASHINGTON – The September U.S. employment figures, delayed by the 16-day partial shutdown of the federal government that ended today, will be issued on Oct. 22, the Labor Department said.

A total of nine releases were rescheduled, including the October employment report, which will be pushed back to Nov. 8 from the originally announced Nov. 1, according to an announcement today on the Labor Department’s website.

The September jobs data, first planned to come out on Oct. 4, were postponed after lawmakers failed to agree on funding the government by the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1. Figures from the Commerce Department, including retail sales and housing starts, were also postponed and have yet to be rescheduled.

Under normal circumstances, workers from the Census Bureau would have begun surveying households on Oct. 13 to ask people if they were employed during the previous week. The results would then be shared with analysts at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who use it to calculate size of the workforce and the jobless rate.

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Accuracy risk

The delay risks undermining the accuracy of the jobless rate, one of the main measures of the strength of the economy, because it means Americans will be reaching further back into their memories to come up with answers, former BLS commissioners Katharine Abraham and Keith Hall said in interviews last week.

In addition to the jobs reports, investors will get another labor-market gauge on Oct. 24 with the rescheduled release of the August job openings and labor turnover survey.

Figures on pricing will follow. The September producer price index will be released Oct. 29, while data on consumer prices and real earnings for the month will be issued on Oct. 30. Third-quarter figures on employment costs will be released Nov. 19.

Rescheduled dates for other postponed reports, including October inflation data and the preliminary figures on third- quarter productivity, will be announced “later this month,” the Labor Department said in an e-mail.

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