Why October Jobs, CPI Reports Are Unlikely to Be Released

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00:00One government body this market is very focused on, Jack, is the BLS.

00:04The market bias, I would say the bias amongst economists, consensus if you will,

00:08they expected to see the September payrolls report very quickly.

00:11Then over the next few weeks or so, they expected to see the October payrolls report.

00:16And there was a question mark around CPI. Perhaps we'd never get it.

00:19Jack, the press secretary yesterday, October CPI and the jobs report will likely never be released.

00:26Jack, what do we know about that?

00:27That is one area where there's a lot of latitude given to the White House.

00:33This is a shutdown that has tested the limits of how many decisions the executive branch can make on its own.

00:41And the details of pushing President Trump to release BLS data, economic data overall,

00:48was not written into this measure to fund the government.

00:52This is an area where there's a lot of latitude and there are, in a legal capacity,

00:59not a lot of people pushing the president to release more data.

01:03There may be pressure to release more data.

01:05There's a lot of interest in it.

01:07But this is one area where over a six-week shutdown,

01:11the president has to make decisions and gets to make a lot of decisions about how he manages things.

01:16So people who are frustrated with that, in a legal sense, may be out of luck,

01:21because there's no directive from Congress telling him what he has to do.

01:26So it was surprising to hear the breadth of what's not going to be released from October from the White House press secretary.

01:33But there's not a lot of legal pushback or recourse for that.

01:38Jack, just quickly, are you suggesting this is a choice?

01:41They actually have a choice to release the data or not?

01:44Well, they've raised issues with the collection of the data.

01:49So I'm not saying that specifically just releasing it is a choice in its own,

01:54because they've got to manage employees and the operations of the BLS.

01:58But this is a matter of latitude for the executive branch,

02:02where there's not a law saying during the shutdown, here's exactly what you have to do.

02:07It's a choice that I think has played out over six weeks and not just a choice on its own.

02:13Whether to release data that they feel is proper.

02:17The description from the White House is they have had issues putting this together

02:22during the limitations they face during the shutdown.