Source: CounterPunch
by Dean Baker
“The government shutdown made the November jobs report especially hard to read. There was not just the problem of missing a month of jobs data for the first time in many decades, but also the difficulty in trying to determine how much impact the shutdown had on the data. In principle, the shutdown should have had little direct impact on either the household or the establishment survey. In the household survey, people who had been furloughed should have been back at work during the reference period and therefore answered that they were employed. With the establishment survey, government employees were always on the payroll, so should have been listed as employed. But there are indirect ways in which the shutdown could have affected the data.” (12/22/25)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/22/trump-economy-one-doll-multiple-dolls/