Companies shed a seasonally adjusted 32,000 jobs during the month, the biggest slide since March 2023, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Wednesday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for an increase of 45,000.
In addition to the drop in September, the August payrolls number was revised to a loss of 3,000 from an initially reported increase of 54,000.
The report comes as the funding impasse in Washington, D.C., has led to the first government closure since late 2018 into early 2019. Failing a deal over the next two days, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ nonfarm payrolls report for September will not be released, nor will the Labor Department put out the weekly jobless claims count on Thursday. The last time the BLS payrolls report was delayed was in 2013.
Federal Reserve officials count on the payrolls releases as they make decisions on interest rates. The Fed next meets Oct. 28-29, meaning there won’t be another payrolls report before then.
I am kind of wondering if it has to do with government contracts. Government contracts often are tied to inflation numbers where each option year has an allowable CPI percentage, or some contracts have terms and clauses that allow a contractor to get an adjustment if CPI is higher than anticipated.
So if the official government numbers says x happened, that’s the only data the contract cares about. This would be a huge way to save money assuming you have enough vendors signed on for long enough.