WSJ What’s News - It’s Jobs Friday, But Without the Data

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

A.M. Edition for Oct. 3. The government shutdown means the Bureau of Labor Statistics isn’t issuing its monthly jobs report, but WSJ’s Justin Lahart explains how alternative statistics from private firms are helping to fill the gap. Plus, Vladimir Putin scoffs at claims that Russia is behind drone incursions, as new sightings cancel flights overnight. And, Taylor Swift’s latest album shatters download records. Kate Bullivant hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Protecting your nest egg, no matter what the market does, most people call that the smart money. At American National Insurance Company, we call it a multi-year guarantee annuity. Fund your annuity online at annuities.americanational.com. The White House is increasingly worried about political backlash over health care cuts. Plus, the government shutdown means its jobs Friday, but without the monthly employment data. It sends people looking toward alternative data sources, which, you know, people are always looking at, but now it's really come front and center. And Putin scoffs at claims that Russia is behind drone incursions, as new sightings cancel flights overnight. It's Friday, October 3rd. I'm Kate Bullivan for the Wall Street Journal.

And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. It's the third day of the government shut down. And on the surface, President Trump is showing confidence that he's winning the messaging war over Democrats. Both sides yesterday continued the finger pointing while signaling that they were keen to find a way out of the current impasse to end the shutdown. Here's House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Call your senators, your Democrat senators, the 44 people who want to shut the government down. You should call them right now and tell them to get here and get to work and open the country up for the people. Let's find a bipartisan path forward and let's address the Republican healthcare crisis.

However, despite the public bravado, Republicans are becoming increasingly concerned that their party will be blamed for allowing health care subsidies to expire, increasing costs for millions of Americans. Inside the White House, AIDS are discussing proposals to extend the enhanced subsidies for a Care Act health insurance plans. We understand that Trump hasn't yet decided whether he will endorse such a proposal. Republicans say they'll only hold negotiations with Democrats on the matter after the government is reopened. It comes as voters have expressed deepening frustration with Trump's handling of the economy in recent polls. And those concerns about the economy are

likely to be compounded today as the government shutdown means we won't be getting the usual monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Journal Economics reporter Justin Layhart spoke to our Daniel Bark about the immediate impact this will have. Yeah, so the BLS will not be reporting the September jobs report on Friday. Usually, that's something that people get very anxious about. They're refreshing the page. They're digging into the numbers.

They're trying to figure out, you know, what's going on with the labor market. And we're not going to get that. And as long as the government shutdown persists, there's going to be a lot of. of other data that isn't going to be available. The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics produces inflation data. The Commerce Department has retail sales. It has trade data. So there's just all kinds of statistics on the economy and the health of the economy that we're not going to be seen. And if you think about this, that would never be a good thing. It's maybe particularly not a good thing right now because we're at this moment where

the job market appears to have really deteriorated. at the same time. Spending seems pretty good. And inflation is above where the Federal Reserve would like it to be. So all these sort of moving parts that make it very hard to interpret what's going on. And now, you know, really kind of fly in with instruments. What is the immediate impact of that when people don't have access to this data? As you say, it comes at a crucial point where we've seen this weakening. So what does that mean for the data we're expecting and for the people that read that? that data? I mean, the data will eventually come out. It'll be postponed. The Fed has a meeting this

month. Some of the data might not be in hand. So what it does is it sends people looking toward alternative data sources, which people are always looking at, but now it's really come front and center. As you say, this comes at a time when some have been questioning the reliability of the jobs data, looking to other places. Might this accelerate that? And what are the standout data points that people may be looking to. So ADP, which is a large payroll processor, processes about 26 million people's paychecks. So they have employment data that came out on Wednesday. It looked rather weak.

There's a sort of a newcomer called Ravellio Labs that scrapes data from LinkedIn and other networking sites to also come up with jobs data. They came out with their number on Thursday. It wasn't as bad as ADPs. they actually suggested using their data plus ADPs to kind of triangulate what is actually happening. And you come up with a fairly weak number that way. When it comes to things like retail sales, people will look at credit card spending data or bank card spending data. When it comes to inflation, there are people who scrape websites for prices, primarily an outfit called price stats.

So they'll be looking at that to try and get a read on inflation. So all of this stuff is out there, and for sure, there have been problems and concerns with the government data. Most economists still want the government data. It includes things that aren't available in some of these private data sets. And in fact, a lot of these private data sets are built on the scaffolding of government data. Let's say you want to know what inflation is and you have like all of the prices. But you need to know how much people spend on different things to come up with an idea of an inflation basket, a price basket, right? That's data that comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

They do the surveys to create those baskets. Without those baskets, you don't really know what's going on with inflation, right? So they need that stuff. That was journal economics reporter Justin Layhart speaking to our Daniel Bark. coming up the rest of the day's news including another drone incursion in Europe and what may be the album launch of the year those stories and more after the break protecting your nest egg no matter what the market does most people call that the smart money at american national insurance company we call it a multi-year guarantee annuity

fund your annuity online at annuities dot americanational dot com We're exclusively reporting that senators on both sides of the political aisle pressed the Pentagon's top lawyer to provide a better legal explanation for striking alleged drugboats in the Caribbean. That happened in a classified Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on Wednesday, where people, with knowledge of the matter, said Eric Matthews repeatedly referred to President Trump's designation of some Latin American drug cartel, as foreign terrorist organizations.

Matthews, the Pentagon General Counsel, said that designation granted the Defense Department unilateral authority to use military force against them. In a confidential notice to Congress yesterday, which has been viewed by the journal, Trump said that the U.S. is in a so-called non-international armed conflict with the cartels and that the U.S. had, quote, determined their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States.

Israel is deporting activists, including Greta Thunberg, after their aid vessel headed for Gaza, was intercepted by the Israeli military. The move to intercept the flotilla has sparked backlash from the international community, with protests erupting across major cities, including Paris, London and Istanbul. Here it's the Italians in the city of Bratia. President Trump said earlier this week, he was on the verge of a deal to end the war in Gaza, warning Hamas to accept his peace plan or face even more military pressure from Israel

with the full support of Washington. Hamas has indicated it might support the effort. And in Germany, Munich Airport has reopened this morning, after several drone sightings grounded flights overnight, affecting nearly 3,000 passengers. It's the latest in a string of interruptions, European airspace that have spurred NATO members to retune defences. A moderator at a forum of foreign policy experts yesterday asked Russian President Vladimir Putin why he was sending so many

drones to places like France, Portugal and Denmark. Putin gested that he won't do it anymore and cast the claims of Russian involvement in drone incursions as part of, quote, NATO efforts to inflame tensions. This is also one of the ways to escalate the situation in general, to fulfill the Washington boss's orders and increase defense spending. And finally, Taylor Swift's 12th studio album has hit streaming platforms everywhere after being released overnight. The Life of a Showgirl is her shortest.

album yet at just 40 minutes, and according to data from Spotify, the download traffic broke all records. It was back in August that Swift revealed on the new Heights podcast, hosted by her fiancé Travis Kelsey and his brother Jason, that the album was written while on the era's tour. It just comes from like the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in my life. And so that effervescence has come through on this record. And like, as you said, bangers. Well, whether you're spending this morning listening to Pop Bangers or not, we hope your weekend gets off to a good start.

And that's it. For What's News for this Friday morning, today's show was produced by Daniel Bark. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Kate Bullivant for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening. Thank you.