Labor Department Cancels Release of Much-Anticipated October Jobs Report

[progree]

11. Actually, for Establishment Data, the October data will be published with the November data

OK, some background -- the monthly Employment Situation report that is published the first Friday of the following month (usually), consists of two parts:

1. The "Current Employment Statistics survey", (CES) also known as the Establishment Survey, is a survey of businesses. From this comes the headline nonfarm payroll jobs numbers. The screenshot in the OP (see below) says it will be published with the November 2025 data.

The November data is usually published the first Friday of December. The Revised news release dates says it will be December 16. So we will see the October establishment data in mid-December (along with the November data) -- whether the October numbers will be broken out, or just part of the November numbers -- who knows.

2. The Household Survey - It is a sample survey of about 60,000 eligible households -- it produces the headline unemployment rate and many other metrics like the labor force participation rate.

We will never see Household Survey numbers for October. This is not new news -- it has been reported for at least a week..

What's new news, at least to me, is that I thought an October jobs report would be published whenever, containing just the Establishment Survey. But now we learn it won't be a separate report, but part of the November report.

News summary - https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Employment Situation Technical NoteNews summary - https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm

Revised news release dates following the 2025 lapse in appropriations
https://www.bls.gov/bls/2025-lapse-revised-release-dates.htm

BLS will not publish an October 2025 Employment Situation news release. Establishment survey data from the Current Employment Statistics survey for October 2025 will be published with the November 2025 data. Household survey data from the Current Population Survey could not be collected for the October 2025 reference period due to a lapse in appropriations. The household survey data is not able to be retroactively collected. The collection period for November 2025 data will be extended for both surveys, and extra processing time will be added.

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While I'm at it, here is the latest payroll data through August (Establishment Survey)
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001

Monthly increases
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth

I set the date range from 2024 to 2025 (the default is 2015 to 2025, both date ranges include thru August 2025) because the latter range -- with the huge pandemic changes in 2020 -- make everything before and after look like tiny squiggles hugging the x axis.

January 2024 - August 2025


These numbers do not include the downward 911,000 jobs revision in the April 1, 2024 thru March 31, 2025 period that was announced in September. They have not, and it's my understanding they never will come up with a month-by-month breakdown . It's an average of 76,000 jobs per month downward. I believe these will show up in the data series in early March 2026, but will have to dig for the articles.

When it does show up in the data series, are they just going to adjust each of the monthly numbers down by 76,000? I don't know.

They do this kind of 12-months revision annually. IIRC, the previous one was something over 500k downward. I could dig in and find out what they did as far as adjusting the data series, if I took the time to find out.