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.
The government shutdown is not the actual reason why the BLS is not releasing the already compiled job loss numbers. Trump said before the shutdown that wasn’t going to release the numbers. And the reason why is obvious. Trump’s incompetence caused job losses starting in August and increasing 10 fold in September. Everything Traitorapist Trump touches turns into shit. Nobody in his government is remotely qualified for their jobs starting at the top.
What’s stupid to me is Trump isn’t releasing numbers, but doesn’t realize the big payroll companies are still reporting theirs. The real economists will find the numbers one way or another.
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.
