Overview
- Labor Department did not release the October employment report for a second month, and economists warn the household survey may be impossible to reconstruct even after a reopening.
- Fed officials are substituting private indicators and regional models for missing benchmarks, including ADP payrolls, state unemployment insurance filings, online price trackers, and new dashboards from the Atlanta, Chicago, and Boston Feds.
- ADP estimated private payrolls rose by 42,000 in October with pay up 4.5% year over year, led by education and health care and trade, transportation and utilities, while information, professional and business services, manufacturing, and leisure and hospitality fell.
- Additional private readings signal cooling: Challenger tallied 153,074 announced job cuts in October, Indeed’s postings fell to the lowest since 2021, LinkedIn saw hiring little changed from September, and Gusto reported weaker small‑business hiring.
- Inflation proxies diverged as PriceStats pointed higher and Adobe’s online index fell year over year, the Chicago Fed pegged unemployment near 4.4%, and Austan Goolsbee said the blackout strengthens the case to slow the pace of additional rate cuts.