Economists estimate the jobs report that wasn't would have shown employers added 175,000 jobs last month compared with 169,000 in August.Today, for the first time in 17 years, Washington's most closely followed economic statistics didn't get out on schedule.
But if the government shutdown hadn't prevented the Labor Department from publishing its September employment numbers, what would they have been?
Not much different from August's, based on the best guesses of 42 economists who stepped into the information void Friday in a USA TODAY survey.
The median answers: 7.3% unemployment and payroll gains of 175,000 jobs last month. That's the same unemployment rate and an increase of just 6,000 jobs.
"What we're seeing in some of the indicators … is that activity has picked up somewhat," says Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist of Barclays Capital, who expected 200,000 job gains last month.
First-time claims for unemployment benefits recently have fallen to pre-recession lows, underscoring that fewer employers are cutting jobs.
While that doesn't necessarily mean hiring has picked up, low jobless claims almost always signal stronger net payroll growth — a figure that combines job losses and gains.
"When claims will go down, employment goes up," says Jim O'Sullivan, chief U.S. economist of High Frequency Economics.
Other barometers of the job market also have been generally positive, including measures of manufacturing and service-sector activity. And the number of Americans working part time who prefer full-time work fell sharply in August, Maki notes.
This week, ADP, a payroll processor, estimated that businesses added a tepid 166,000 jobs in September, but that monthly report has diverged by an average of 38,000 from Labor's survey over the past 11 months, O'Sullivan's analysis shows.
Many economists had expected job growth to pick up toward the latter part of 2013 as the effects of federal spending cuts and a payroll tax increase fade. But Maki now says those effects will likely last through the fourth quarter.
"We're not in a breakout phase yet," says economist Michael Dolega of TD Economics. "Businesses don't want to be investing in this environment."
Maki and O'Sullivan say job growth likely strengthened in September largely because tallies the past three months have been below the previous trend. Hence, some payback was in order. They expect employment to pick up in earnest next year.
Of course any sanguine forecasts will be upended by an extended impasse in Congress over funding the government and raising the nation's debt ceiling.
In USA survey Friday, economists' median forecast for October's job gains is just 160,000 — assuming that report comes out on time.
It's no coincidence that the last time the Labor Department didn't release the jobs figures as scheduled, typically the first Friday of the month, was in January 1996.
Washington, D.C., was paralyzed by a blizzard and — you guessed it — the last federal government shutdown.
