White House Economist Says October Jobs Data Might Never Be Known Due to Shutdown

A White House economic adviser confirmed Thursday that federal officials won’t be able to determine what the unemployment rate was for last month due to the government shutdown that ended on Wednesday. “The October employment report for the payroll side will be able to be calculated, but the household survey wasn’t completed,” National Economic Council head Kevin Hassett told reporters outside the White House. Instead, there will be a “half a jobs report,” he continued. “Most everything else, I think, we’ll be able to concoct the correct number after we look back, but we will never know what the unemployment rate was in October, because there wasn’t a household survey with that.”...