September jobs report will be out Thursday as first data since shutdown starts to trickle out

The first economic data report that went unreleased due to the government shutdown will be released next week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.

As the U.S. government reopens for business, Wall Street's attention now turns toward when critical data on employment, inflation and other economic signposts will be released.

The first such report, on September nonfarm payrolls, will come out Thursday at 8:30 a.m., according to a BLS update posted on its website.

A day later, the BLS will release real earnings, a companion report to the monthly consumer price index that did not come out simultaneously in October because average earnings earnings, which are part of the payrolls report, were not released. Real earnings are the difference between the monthly CPI reading and the average hourly earnings.

In fact, September CPI was the only official data point released during the shutdown due to its role in computing the cost of living adjustment for Social Security benefits.

Economists expect that the “employment situation” report, as it is known, to include just the nonfarm payrolls count and not the unemployment rate.

That's because the report entails two surveys: a more objective look at “hard data” from businesses that uses timecards and payroll numbers to assess how many jobs have been filled, and another entailing telephone calls and written surveys to households asking how many people are working. The latter survey is used to calculate the jobless rate and would be difficult to replicate.

The Commerce Department, including the Bureau of Economic Analysis, had not posted revised schedules as of Friday morning, but updates are expected soon.

Uncertainty on other releases casts another cloud over what has become an increasingly contentious policymaking atmosphere at the Federal Reserve — not to mention the nervous climate among investors.

“The absence of timely official numbers left the markets and the Fed operating in a data fog, forced to scour alternate sources to gauge the underlying outlook,” Bank of America economist Shruti Mishra said in a note. “With the shutdown resolved, all eyes will now be on the incoming data dump.”

The shutdown not only halted data collection and releases, but it also complicated the picture once the data does start coming out.