Evelyn Reynolds

A paycheck scheduled on Oct. 15 for the 1.3 million members in the armed services might convince legislators and the White House that missing the date won’t be worth the political cost.
While the respective sides have dug in their heels regarding the fiscal budget, missing a pay period could rile public anger. At the least, it encourages a temporary bill known as a continuing resolution.

Soldiers march during a military parade to commemorate the U.S. Army’s 250th Birthday in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 14, 2025.
Nathan Howard | Reuters

As the government shutdown drags on with little hope of a quick resolution, a situation involving the U.S. military could push the warring factions in Washington to come to an agreement.
No, soldiers won’t be called into duty to force Congress to get back to work.

However, a looming paycheck scheduled in the middle of October for the 1.3 million active-duty members of the armed services might convince legislators and the White House that missing the date won’t be worth the political cost.
“We believe the military pay date on Oct. 15 could be an important forcing event for a compromise to restore funding and expect the shutdown to end by mid-October,” Goldman Sachs economists Ronnie Walker and Alec Phillips said in a client note.
The Wall Street firm noted that prediction markets are placing high odds that the shutdown will last beyond the deadline. Polymarket reflects a 71% probability that the shutdown will run past Oct. 14.

While the respective sides have dug in their heels regarding the fiscal budget, missing a pay period could rile public anger. At the least, it could lead to a temporary bill known as a continuing resolution to allow government to operate, the Goldman economists said.
If not, then that could mean an even longer stalemate.

“We expect pressure to build on both parties to reach a compromise before then,” they wrote. “That said, if this pressure leads to an alternative outcome — the Dept. of Defense might find a way to pay troops despite the funding lapse, or Congress might come under pressure to approve funding for that specific issue — there are few other specific forcing events on the calendar that could lead to a restoration of funding.”
The observations come with scant hopes of a resolution.
The Senate has scheduled a vote for Monday at 5:30 p.m., but observers expect little progress. President Donald Trump has threatened that if no agreement is reached, some of the temporary layoffs resulting from the impasse could become permanent.
There are myriad issues that could force Congress’ hand beyond the military pay. Data releases that policymakers rely on have been suspended, airport delays are a looming possibility depending on whether Transportation Security Administration workers show up, and most other government services are closed pending an agreement.
Still, there are fears that neither side will budge.
“Concerns over military pay, TSA operations, or delayed mortgage payments for service members could become catalysts for compromise,” Ed Mills, Washington policy analyst at Raymond James, said in a note. “While a short-term continuing resolution remains the most likely outcome, we do not rule out the risk of a prolonged shutdown extending until November.”
Other dates to watch include a potential Oct. 13 expiration of Women Infant Children benefits, Nov. 1 when open enrollment begins for Obamacare and Nov. 21, when Congress is scheduled to break for Thanksgiving at the busiest period of travel during the year.
However, the risk remains that the shutdown will continue, according to Pimco analysts.
“Shutdowns are easy, but reopenings are harder, and this one – which is the first full shutdown since 2013 – seems particularly intractable, at least for now,” the firm said in a note. More

Mongolia plans to build data centers powered by renewable energy as it prepares its first sovereign wealth fund.
The Chinggis Khaan Sovereign Wealth Fund has $1.4 billion in assets and is aimed at channeling its mineral wealth to social welfare and infrastructure.
The sovereign fund also seeks to build more “mega-scaled” renewable energy power grids and projects to boost green energy exports.

A view from the statue of Genghis Khan in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on April 04, 2022.
Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Mongolia, long reliant on mining, plans to build data centers powered by renewable energy as it prepares its first sovereign wealth fund aimed at channeling its mineral wealth to social welfare and infrastructure.
“We have a massive land with a very favorable climate for activities like [hosting] data centers,” Temuulen Bayaraa, CEO of the sovereign fund, told CNBC on the sidelines of the Milken Institute Asia Summit in Singapore on Friday.

The landlocked East Asian nation is developing special economic zones dedicated for data centers, she added, referring to the Hunnu City that is envisioned as a smart, sustainable urban city.
The Chinggis Khaan Sovereign Wealth Fund, established by law in April last year, has $1.4 billion in reserves and seeks to tap global demand for computing power and clean energy. Its investment strategy is still pending the government’s review and final approval.
A host of Asian countries have accelerated efforts to develop data centers this year amid growing demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Japan, Singapore and Malaysia have ramped up investments in building out their data center capacity.
The recent explosion in AI workloads globally requires vast computing power, electrical power, cooling and networking infrastructure. Goldman Sachs expects global power demand from data centers to rise 50% by 2027 and by as much as 165% by 2030.
Aside from data centers, part of the fund’s returns will also be used to build “mega-scaled” renewable energy power grids and projects, as part of the country’s efforts to boost green energy exports to neighboring countries, Bayaraa said. Mongolia, sandwiched between Russia and China, has upgraded its ties with both superpowers to the level of “comprehensive strategic partnerships” in recent years.

The plan comes as the Mongolian government pledged to boost the share of renewable energy, especially wind and solar power, in the country’s electricity capacity to 30% by 2030, up from 18.3% in 2023.
The fund’s investment strategies will also center on countering risks associated with price fluctuations in commodities, Bayaraa said, as the funds’ sources are “very dependent on commodities.” The Chinggis Fund is managed by Erdenes Mongol, a government-owned holding company that owns a share in the country’s mining assets.
The sparsely-populated country, with just about 3.5 million residents, has benefited from a boom in prices for its rich supplies of critical minerals, including coal, copper, uranium and rare-earth elements.

TOPSHOT – A general aerial view shows houses and Yurts in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on June 25, 2024.
Hector Retamal | Afp | Getty Images

Rebuilding trust

The Mongolian government has been under growing pressure to distribute its mineral wealth among its people and put an end to corruption in the sector. Anti-corruption protests in its capital, Ulaanbaatar, earlier this year forced Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai to step down as prime minister.
“People didn’t feel like mining contributed to the wealth, betterment of their livelihoods while eroding the natural resources. But now the sovereign wealth fund is positioned in a way to rebuild that trust,” Bayaraa said.
The fund will play a central role in the country’s development plan aimed at providing more transparency and equity in wealth distribution, she added, by pulling in mineral wealth to be “managed and disbursed in a ring-fenced manner to support people, their educational needs, financing, educational, healthcare and housing needs.”
“The critical work is to build a governance model [for the fund],” she added. Citizens will be able to access on an app details of the fund’s sources, allocation and balance. “It’s very targeted intervention for expanding middle class, pushing labor market participation,” she said.
The fund’s leader plans to hire members of the Mongolian diaspora with experience in the banking, investment, and wealth management industries to return home and help manage the fund.
“For the longest time, Mongolia has been attracting investment into Mongolia. For the first day, we are becoming an investor to contribute to the global agenda,” Bayaraa said. More

The first Friday of the month brings the closely watched Bureau of Labor Statistics nonfarm payrolls survey. That didn’t happen because of the government shutdown.
While the BLS has gone dark, other reports outside the government data suggest the labor market just plodded along in September.
Broader trends suggest an uneven labor market, with professions like health care continuing to thrive while other fields lag.

Recruiters speak to job seekers at the Appalachian State University internship and job fair in Boone, North Carolina, US, on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025.
Allison Joyce | Bloomberg | Getty Images

If it just seems like the first Friday of the month wasn’t the same without being able to pore through the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ hotly watched monthly jobs report, don’t worry. You probably didn’t miss much.
While the BLS has gone dark with the shutdown in Washington, other reports outside the government data suggest the labor market just plodded along in September.

The Dow Jones consensus forecast was for growth of 51,000 in nonfarm payrolls with the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.3%.
High-frequency data that includes job postings, private payrolls and state-by-state figures for initial jobless claims indicate that while employment growth continues to be anemic, the labor market overall isn’t capsizing, at least not anytime soon.
“We fight with the army we have at moments like this, where it’s critically important that we’re figuring out whether the economy is in a moment of transition,” Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee said in a CNBC interview Friday. “This is what we have, and thus far it still continues to point to a pretty stable labor market.”
The Chicago Fed is one of those organizations looking to provide alternates to BLS data that had come under harsh White House criticism prior to this week’s shutdown.
Though the timing was coincidental, the central bank district in September unveiled its own dashboard of data measuring key labor market metrics including unemployment, the hiring rate and the layoff rate.

Bottom line: The unemployment rate held flat at 4.3%, though another hundredth of a point or two would have pushed it to 4.4% — the highest since October 2021 but still low by historical standards.
Other nongovernmental data showed similar trends: Conditions overall are softening, with job availability gradually shrinking.
But employers are still reluctant to part with workers given the lessons from the Covid pandemic, when a rash of layoffs in the early stages was followed by the monumental task of refilling those jobs. At one point, open positions outnumbered available workers by more than 2 to 1.
“A lot of the new entrants in the market, young workers, recent graduates, people who are already unemployed [are] having a hard time getting into the market,” said Cory Stahle, senior economist at job postings site Indeed, which itself provides an encompassing menu of labor market data. “Regardless of what the unemployment rate is, people taking longer to find jobs is a sign of some economic distress for some households.”

Signs of imbalances

Indeed’s measure of job postings shows a decline of about 8.9% from a year ago as of Sept. 26, a sharper drop than the 5.5% reflected in BLS data, which only runs through August.
Broader trends suggest an uneven labor market, with professions like health care continuing to thrive while other fields lag, Stahle said.
“Overall, things are looking pretty good, but a lot of those job gains, a lot of those postings and hiring, are coming from health care, and so it’s hard to say that the labor market is fully in balance when it’s not providing equal opportunities across different occupations,” he said.
BLS data also has shown a fairly sizeable tilt in openings toward health care-related professions, with business and professional services next followed by leisure and hospitality. Government had been a leader but has pulled back since President Donald Trump began his term in January with a vow to pare down the federal payroll.
“Right now is a good time to be a nurse, not so good of a time to be working as a software developer,” Stahle added. “That bifurcation of the labor market is also an important thing to look at here, not just the overall balance and an overall number.”
Other indicators paint a similar picture, though ADP’s private payroll count for September showed a decline of 32,000 jobs and an August loss of 3,000 as well. ADP on occasion also has been maligned for being incongruent with BLS data. However, the firm’s reports are getting a closer look after it signaled a slowdown in the labor market well before the BLS marked down its own counts also to show a weak hiring picture.
It wasn’t just the monthly nonfarm payroll account that went missing because of the shutdown: The Labor Department also didn’t release its weekly tally of initial jobless claims.
Goldman Sachs came to the rescue for that metric, figuring that state-level claims data that was filed pointed to a national total of 224,000 — slightly higher than the previous week but largely in line with trends through most of the year.

Other measures

Beyond simple job or payroll count, spending data also can be a useful indirect gauge.
Bank of America’s credit and debit card tracking showed spending on a steady uptick in September. Total card outlays compared to a year ago increased 2.2% for the week ending Sept. 27.
“Spending growth remains solid despite soft labor data. We will continue to monitor this dichotomy,” BofA economist Shruti Mishra said in a client note.
Similarly, Fiserv’s small business index showed annual sales and transactions increased 2.3% in September, reflecting the same pace for the past three months.
However, other small business indicators show weakness.
“Right now we see that there are a lot of firms that have job openings. There are, unfortunately, very few that get filled,” Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business, told CNBC on Friday. “So plans to fill them are always very optimistic, but when the dust clears, very few jobs actually get created.” More

Data shows young college grads are feeling the brunt of the labor market slowdown.
One think tank has dubbed the U.S. “no country for young grads.”
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged a few weeks ago that young people are having a “harder time” locking down work due to a “low-firing, low-hiring environment.”

Students wait in line before the start a career fair at the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering in the Brooklyn borough of New York.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

With a Georgetown degree and several internships under her belt, Christina Salvadore thought she’d be starting a career in New York City’s fashion or beauty industries around now. The problem: She can’t find a job.
The 23-year-old hasn’t been able to land a full-time role despite filling out hundreds of applications and taking dozens of networking calls since graduating in the spring. She’s currently applying to part-time gigs to tide her over financially.

“It definitely sucks when people are like, ‘So what are you doing now?,'” Salvadore, a Florida native, told CNBC. “I’m sitting in my parents’ house on LinkedIn 24 hours a day.”
A growing body of data shows Salvadore isn’t alone. Young college grads are having a uniquely difficult time trying to clinch their first full-time jobs and feeling the brunt of the weakening labor market.
On a macro level, this group’s tough luck is moving the needle in broader data sets that are used in part by economists and monetary policymakers to determine the health of the economy. For the hundreds of thousands of Americans in this camp, it’s altering their visions for what they thought this era of life would look like.

The unemployment rate for “new entrants,” a group that includes new college grads and others trying to break into the full-time workforce, hit a nine-year peak this year, federal data shows. The group’s share of the total unemployed population spiked to its highest percentage in decades.
Put simply: The U.S. has become “no country for young grads,” according to Gad Levanon, chief economist at Burning Glass Institute, and his team at the labor-focused think tank.

An ‘unusual’ trend

In a report published this summer, Levanon and his team found that the bachelor’s degree isn’t delivering on its “fundamental promise” of access to white-collar jobs for the first time in modern history. The once-lauded path from college campus to career, the team concluded, is increasingly less reliable.
After Levanon fielded questions about whether the trend was impacting all young workers or just those with college diplomas, he conducted further analysis of federal data. It shows 20- to 24-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees have seen the most extreme levels of unemployment compared with historical levels than other educational groups.

To be sure, bachelor’s degree holders in this age bracket have long benefited from a lower unemployment rate compared with those with just high school diplomas. But Levanon’s data shows the gap between the two groups is the smallest it has been since at least the early 2000s.
“You clearly see here something unusual for the bachelor’s degree,” Levanon told CNBC.

On popular social media platform TikTok, young adults fresh out of college have made the trials and tribulations associated with finding their first post-grad job a sort of subgenre. They’re documenting the journey and lamenting the discouragement they feel. They’re moving home with their parents. They’re questioning why entry-level job postings require several years of experience. They’re wondering if companies have to “ghost” them, meaning they never get a response to an application.
Several have used the slang phrase “crashing out” to describe how they’re faring emotionally.
“I feel like I’m behind right now,” said recent Boston College grad Michael Hartman, who recently sought insight from a psychic about his career trajectory after around 10 months of unsuccessful job hunting. Hartman has an economics degree and has been seeking a consulting or business strategy role.

‘Very stressful’

This turn of fortune for America’s newest college grads has caught the attention of top economic policymakers and comes amid mounting concerns about the labor market at large.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged a few weeks ago that young people are having a “harder time” locking down work. He pointed to a “low-firing, low-hiring environment,” a landscape that economists have said makes it particularly tough for those looking to break into the full-time workforce.
The number of workers getting hired and quitting slowed in August, according to government data released Tuesday. Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released in September show the volume of people staying unemployed for at least 27 weeks has ballooned around 25% year over year on a seasonally adjusted basis. (Federal labor data previously expected to be released this week is on hold for the duration of the government shutdown.)

Burning Glass’ Levanon said the problem stems in part from the rising share of young Americans obtaining four-year degrees. The demand for workers with this education level isn’t keeping up, he said, meaning current conditions may not improve anytime soon.
This could result in a hit to college enrollment as young people realize higher education is not the career pipeline it once was, Levanon added.

A graduating student of the City College of New York wears a message on his cap during the College’s commencement ceremony in the Harlem section of Manhattan.
Mike Segar | Reuters

On top of that, artificial intelligence’s rise has raised alarm that entry-level, knowledge-worker roles will be automated away.
In August, Stanford published a bombshell study finding U.S. workers aged 22 to 25 in jobs most exposed to AI have seen a 13% decline in employment since 2022. Anecdotally, executives at companies ranging from Walmart to Accenture have said the technology will drastically reshape their labor forces.
Tightening in the labor market has made an entire generation more worried about what the future will hold. Reported probability of losing a job over the next five years among 18- to 34-year-olds in May jumped to highs last seen in 2013, according to University of Michigan data.

These concerns have changed the outlook for recent and soon-to-be college grads alike. After seeing friends struggle to secure employment, Emma Zatkulak began firing off applications several weeks earlier than she previously anticipated. The 21-year-old finds herself scheduling interviews for sales and insurance roles in between a full class load and two jobs.
“It’s been very stressful,” said Zatkulak, who is in her final semester as a communications major at Boise State University in Idaho. “I have not felt calm in a couple months.”

A ‘real phenomenon’

However, not all new grads may be feeling this shift to the same extent.
On job board Indeed, software development job listings are at around 66% of the volume seen before the Covid pandemic. On the other hand, nursing position postings are up about 16% compared with the same baseline.
“It’s a real phenomenon,” said Laura Ullrich, Indeed’s director of economic research for North America. “But at the same time, I do not think it applies to all students or all young people. It depends on what sector they’re working in.”

Still, Ullrich acknowledged that there’s reason for young adults’ anxiety. She pointed to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics that found fewer tracked industries have added jobs over the last six months than removed them, which has historically only happened during and around recessions.
In the technology industry, the decline in entry-level hiring is particularly clear. The percentage of hires with little work experience has plunged more than 50% at large-cap tech companies between 2019 and 2024, according to venture capital firm SignalFire. At startups, that rate has dropped more than 47%.

Young job seekers told CNBC that the difficulty of finding a job has brought up feelings of social isolation and self-doubt. As rejections pile up, they said it can become hard not to take it personally.
Over recent months, Julia Vasedkova has watched fellow graduates from Tennessee’s Rhodes College start their new lives as young professionals. Meanwhile, Vasedkova has been in a state of self-described “limbo” with only a part-time job, despite sending off hundreds of applications. The English major has applied for teaching, publishing and social media positions.
The 24-year-old finds herself turning down invitations for social gatherings to conserve money for rent and other expenses. It’s also time that she could be spending trying to find the increasingly elusive post-grad job, anyway.
“It’s definitely exhausting. Some days, it feels like I have a full-time job just to apply for jobs,” Vasedkova said. “It just feels like I don’t really have a life outside of that.”

Read more CNBC analysis on culture and the economy More

Unemployment changed little in September, while layoff and hiring rates both slowed, according to separate labor market reports Thursday.
The reports, from the Chicago Fed and Challenger, Gray & Christmas, substitute for data that normally comes from the government but won’t this week because of the shutdown.

Job fair signage as job seekers arrive at the Appalachian State University internship and job fair in Boone, North Carolina, US, on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025.
Allison Joyce | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Unemployment changed little in September, while layoff and hiring rates both slowed, according to separate labor market reports Thursday.
The jobless level barely moved at 4.34%, according to a relatively new set of data indicators compiled by the Chicago Federal Reserve. That represented little change from August, though was just 0.01 percentage point away from moving up to 4.4%, the highest level since October 2021.

In September, the central bank district announced it would be releasing its own dashboard of labor market indicators that also includes the layoff rate, which was little changed monthly at 2.1%, and the hiring rate, which moved lower to 45.2%, down 0.4 percentage point from August.
Elsewhere in the labor market, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that layoff announcements declined 37% in September and were down 26% from the same month a year ago.
However, the year-to-date level of planning furloughs is the highest since 2020, the year of the Covid pandemic. Challenger said announced cuts have totaled 946,426 through the first three quarters. The figure already is 24% higher than all of 2024.

Lowest new hirings since 2009

At the same time, the firm said hiring plans have receded sharply.
New hirings totaled just 204,939 so far in 2025, off 58% from the same period a year ago and the lowest level since 2009, when the U.S. economy was still in the throes of the financial crisis.

“Previous periods with this many job cuts occurred either during recessions or, as was the case in 2005 and 2006, during the first wave of automations that cost jobs in manufacturing and technology,” said Andy Challenger, the firm’s senior vice president and labor expert.
Together, the data points fill in some gaps on information that usually comes from the Labor Department.
However, with the government shutdown entering its second day and no indications of a resolution anytime soon, economists and Fed policymakers will have to rely on data that doesn’t come from the government.
The department normally would have released its weekly count of initial jobless claims on Thursday. Friday’s nonfarm payrolls count from the Bureau of Labor Statistics also will be delayed. More

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC’s on Thursday that U.S. economic growth could be hurt by the government shutdown.
The Cabinet official spoke on the second day of the closure as the two warring sides in Washington, D.C. have yet to come to an agreement on a continuing spending resolution.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that U.S. economic growth could be hurt by the government shutdown.
“This isn’t the way to have a discussion, shutting down the government and lowering the GDP,” Bessent said during a CNBC “Squawk Box” interview. “We could see a hit to the GDP, a hit to growth and a hit to working America.”

The Cabinet official spoke on the second day of the government closure as the two warring sides in Washington, D.C. have yet to come to an agreement on a continuing resolution that would allow spending and operations to proceed.
Growth in the U.S. has been on upward trajectory over the past two quarters after the economy slogged through the early part of the year.
Gross domestic product rose at a 3.8% annualized pace in the second quarter, and, according to the Atlanta Federal Reserve GDPNow tracker, is on track to grow at the same rate for the recently completed third quarter.
Though previous government shutdowns have shown little impact on growth, a prolonged stoppage could inflict some damage, particularly if President Donald Trump follows through and permanently fires a significant amount of the 750,000 or so federal workers impacted by the current situation.
Asked about whether Trump is considering that move, Bessent called it a “talking point.”

“Senator [Chuck] Schumer, Representative [Hakeem] Jeffries, you know, they’re weak, they’re discombobulated,” Bessent said of the respective Democratic leaders in the Senate and House. “They don’t represent the American people, and you know they’re making up excuses.”
The labor market is one of the most sensitive parts of the economy now. Private payrolls fell by 32,000 in September, according to ADP, reflecting the slowdown in hiring.
Though weekly jobless claims have been largely in check, announced layoffs this year are at their highest level since 2020, the year of the Covid pandemic, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported Thursday.
On a separate matter, Bessent said there will be news announced Tuesday on “substantial support” for farmers, particularly in the soybean industry.
Also, he said interviews are continuing to find a replacement for Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May 2026. Bessent has been speaking with some 11 prospective hopefuls for central bank chief. The first round of interviews has been completed, with the second to start next week, ultimately resulting in a list of three to five candidates referred to Trump for a final decision. More

If any doubts remained about whether the Fed will be lowering its key interest rate, the budget loggerheads a few blocks away in the nation’s capital may have cemented the move.
Markets have priced in a 100% probability of an October cut and an 88% chance of another in December. Both are higher from when the lockout began at midnight Thursday.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee at the Federal Reserve on September 17, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

If any doubts remained about whether the Federal Reserve will be lowering its key interest rate later this month, the budget loggerheads a few blocks away in the nation’s capital may have cemented the move.
Particularly if the impasse stretches out past a few days, Chair Jerome Powell and his fellow central bankers likely will err on the side of caution, which in this case would be a bias towards easing, Wall Street experts say.

“The US government shutdown and associated data delays nudge what we judged was already a firmly odds-on Fed rate cut in October further odds-on,” Krishna Guha, head of global policy and central bank strategy at Evercore ISI, said in a client note.
Potential damage from the lockdown combined with ongoing concerns over the labor market will outweigh inflation concerns, he added.
“Our further lean into October – in spite of ongoing cautious language from Fed officials – reflects the even lower probability post-shutdown the Fed will get enough reassurance on labor market in time to rein in the soft default of successive cuts” through the end of the year that the Fed indicated in projections released last month, Guha said.
A narrow majority of officials at the September meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee indicated a preference of two cuts instead of one through the end of 2025. Some have expressed concern that tariffs could yet push inflation higher. Most, though, have said the impacts appear temporary and unlikely to halt a trend of gradual softening that will bring inflation back to the Fed’s 2% target in a few years.

In turn, markets have priced in a 100% probability of an October cut and an 88% chance of another in December, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tracker of futures prices. Both are higher from when the lockout began at midnight Thursday.

Bank of America noted that history shows the lockdown likely will be over by the time the Fed meets Oct. 28-29 and officials will have updated data in hand. However, should the impasse continue until then, the bank’s economists see two reasons why FOMC members will vote to cut.
“First, it would take a solid [September] jobs report to keep an [October] hold in play. If the [September] jobs data are not available, Chair Powell will likely be inclined to push for another ‘risk management’ cut,” BofA economist Stephen Juneau wrote. “Second, the Fed would want to lean against downside risks from an extended shutdown, particularly if government workers are laid off.”
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that each day that government stays dark will mean the layoff of 750,000 workers with total compensation costs of $400 million.
In previous lockouts, workers were brought back on the job with backpay. However, President Donald Trump has threatened an examination on current federal payroll levels and the possibility that some furloughs could be permanent.
That could hurt an already-reeling labor market that saw private payrolls, according to ADP, decline by 32,000 in September. A broader Bureau of Labor Statistics count that includes government workers won’t be released as scheduled Friday if the shutdown continues. More

Private companies shed a seasonally adjusted 32,000 jobs during the month, the biggest slide since March 2023.
The report comes as the funding impasse in Washington, D.C., has led to the first government closure since late 2018 into early 2019.
ADP’s count takes on added significance as markets widely expect the central bank to cut another quarter point off its key borrowing rate.

Jobseekers speak with recruiters during a NYS Department Of Labor job fair at the Downtown Central Library in Buffalo, New York, US, on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025.
Lauren Petracca | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Private payrolls saw their biggest decline in 2½ years during September, a further sign of labor market weakening that compounds the data blackout accompanying the U.S. government shutdown.
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.
ADP’s count, then, takes on added significance as markets widely expect the central bank to cut another quarter point off its key borrowing rate.
Job losses spread across sectors during September, offset by a 33,000 increase in education and health services as schools reopened and health care continued its long streak of hiring.

Elsewhere, leisure and hospitality, a key sector for consumer demand, saw a loss of 19,000 as vacation season wound down. The other services category posted a drop of 16,000, while professional and business services was off 13,000, trade, transportation and utilities declined by 7,000 and construction lost 5,000.
On a broad scale, service providers decreased 28,000 and goods producers shed 3,000. Businesses with fewer than 50 employees lost 40,000, while companies with 500 or more employees added 33,000.
“Despite the strong economic growth we saw in the second quarter, this month’s release further validateswhat we’ve been seeing in the labor market, that U.S. employers have been cautious with hiring,” ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said.
The U.S. economy did expand 3.8% in the second quarter and is on pace for a 3.9% gain in the third quarter, according to the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow data tracker.
However, concerns have increased over the state of the labor market, even with the unemployment rate at a relatively low 4.3%.
“My baseline outlook doesn’t see the labor market softening much further – but there are risks,” Boston Fed President Susan Collins said Tuesday. “In particular, I see some increased risk that labor demand may fall significantly short of supply, leading to a more meaningful and unwelcome increase in the unemployment rate.”
The consensus view for September was a nonfarm payrolls gain of 51,000 in the BLS report, which unlike ADP includes government jobs.
Even with the slowdown in hiring, wages in September grew 4.5% on an annual basis, little changed from August, ADP said. However, the rate of increase slowed to 6.6% for those changing positions, down half a percentage point from August.
ADP said it recalibrated past counts based on BLS benchmark revisions released in September. That resulted in the sharp downward move in the August figure of 43,000. “The narrative remains the same … of a slowing in hiring momentum,” Richardson said on CNBC. More