Employers have grappled with high levels of uncertainty for the last six months, as concerns about the effects of tariffs, mass deportations, and stalled job creation stoked confusion and doubt about the economy. Now, with the government shutdown closing the doors at the federal agency that supplies most employment and labor data, private businesses are increasingly seeking to fill that void by releasing statistical insights of their own.
The Department of Labor’s data gathering Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) had been scheduled to release its monthly job report for September on October 3. It was prevented from doing so by the ongoing government shutdown, which began just two days earlier. That cancellation may have come as something of a relief to President Donald Trump and governing Republicans, since BLS publications have reflected increasingly anemic hiring by businesses since May. Those weak figures suggest companies have largely limited recruitment to only replacing departing employees. That in turn appears to reflect executives’ worries that economic growth may be slowing — and their wider doubts about Trump’s management of the economy.
But contrasting indicators have only served to increase business leaders’ confusion about where exactly the economy is headed.
Official data earlier this year that showed the GDP contracted by 0.6 percent in the first quarter of 2025 was followed by more recent statistics reflecting the econmy came booming back with 3.8 percent growth in Q3. Other positive indicators since have led some observers to forecast continuing expansion in the third quarter, despite continued weak job growth and rising inflation suggesting otherwise.
Now, with federal agencies no longer publishing reports under the government shutdown, most economic analysis is mostly speculation — although BLS has reportedly called in a small group of people to prepare the next consumer price data release. In the meantime, several private business are stepping up to offer any data-driven insights they can glean about the economy.
For example, this week private equity firm Carlyle published data suggesting the BLS report for September would have again contained more disappointing job numbers if it had been released on October 3 as planned.
Using proprietary information from 277 of its portfolio companies employing a total of 730,000 people, Carlyle estimated just 17,000 new jobs were likely created by U.S. businesses last month. That figure is even less than the 22,000 new hires BLS counted in August — dragging the monthly average since May down to just 26,750 new positions.
But the modest numbers Carlyle estimated for September were far better than those from payroll services company ADP, which has long issued a private sector report around the time the BLS releases its own statistics. It said U.S. employers eliminated a net 32,000 jobs last month, basing that estimate on data it collected from the 26 million employees of its customer companies.
Somewhere in between those two analyses was last week’s report from executive outplacement and coaching specialist Challenger, Grey, and Christmas. It said businesses laid off a little over 54,000 people in September, without calculating a net gain or loss.
While its figures on headcount reductions last month were lower than the 85,000 in August, Challenger, Grey, and Christmas noted the total 946,426 job cuts in 2025 so far were the highest since 2020. At the same time, the firm said U.S. employers were hiring at well under half the rate this year than they did in 2024 — generally reinforcing the picture of flattening employment creation.
Those weren’t the only ways private companies trying to generate data capable of making sense of the economy in the absence of official reports during the government shutdown.
According to an article this week in the Washington Post, that private sector search for clues about economic activity is leading observers to scrutinize “paychecks, credit card expenditures, restaurant reservations, Broadway show bookings, and even Statue of Liberty visitor numbers.” They then dive into that data to analyze how people are working and spending, and how fast inflation is pushing up the prices they’re paying.
Carlyle’s findings for September even included the estimate that the economy grew at a 2.7 percent annualized pace in September. And this week, Moody’s Analytics released a report analyzing data from U.S. states showing 22 of them were already in recession, or on the brink of it.
“We’re suddenly opening up new spreadsheets, looking at data we don’t usually turn to,” Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok told the Post. “Some of these indicators are really on the fringe, so we’re having to do different translations: What does this data mean? What might it tell us about the economy?”
Is all that frantic digging really necessary, especially with history showing government shutdowns are typically short — the longest having lasted only 35 days? Perhaps, given the concerns of some observers about trusting data from BLS once it starts issuing reports again.
On August 1, Trump fired then-BLS director Erika McEntarfer after the agency issued downward revisions that dramatically reduced jobs creation numbers from previous months. The result was enduring uncertainty of business leaders and economists about how the economy was faring immediately got worse. In response, Trump took to social media to claim the lower numbers were “phony,” and called them intentionally “RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.”
He then nominated an activist conservative economist to take over the BLS, despite his pick’s controversial track record that included calling for the agency to stop issuing reports on job creation and other important economic indicators.
Though that nominee later withdrew from consideration, economists’ concerns generated by McEntarfer’s firing persist. Those are based on fears of the BLS and other federal departments potentially being forced to issue only data that reflects positively on Trump’s economic stewardship.
That worry about the future reliability of official statistics is likely a big reason why private companies have gotten active in finding and analyzing economic data of their own — and may continue doing so even after the government shutdown ends.
Bruce Crumley
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