U.S. Non-Farm Payrolls Data Turns "Dovish" Again, Key Annual Revisions Also Delayed Due to Government Shutdown

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Monday that the January non-farm employment report, originally scheduled for release this Friday, will not be published as planned due to the U.S. government entering a shutdown for the third time in just three months.

As background, due to escalating conflicts between the two parties over immigration enforcement, the new temporary funding bill has failed to advance in a timely manner, and some federal government departments have been shut down since January 31. Currently, the U.S. Senate has passed an amended bill and is awaiting review by the House of Representatives. House Speaker Johnson stated over the weekend that he expects the vote to be completed as early as Tuesday.

Emily Liddel, Deputy Director of Special Research Affairs at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), said in a statement: “Once government funding is restored, the related data releases will be rescheduled. Due to the partial government shutdown, the BLS will suspend data collection, processing, and release.”

In addition to non-farm payrolls, the December 2025 Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) and the Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment Report, originally scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, will also be delayed.

Of course, in terms of importance, non-farm data is undoubtedly the most critical. The January data not only reflects the latest employment situation but also provides extremely important annual employment revision data. The market generally expects that over the one-year period ending in March 2025, the 1.8 million increase in non-farm employment is significantly “inflated,” with a discrepancy of nearly 1 million compared to corporate tax data, meaning that non-farm employment is overestimated by more than 80,000 each month.

Preliminary data released last August indicated that non-farm employment could be reduced by 911,000.

Given that U.S. non-farm data has shown a clear weakening trend since May last year, if the first three months are “cut again,” the narrative of the U.S. labor market could change accordingly. The total non-farm employment for 2025 is only 584,000, which is the weakest data since 2003 outside of recession years.

(U.S. non-farm employment data, Source: tradingeconomics)

At a time of the latest funding interruption, U.S. statistical agencies are still working to recover from the previous government “shutdown.” Since October last year, the U.S. federal government has experienced a historic 43-day shutdown, causing the September non-farm report to be delayed from the first week of October to November 20. Some October and November reports were combined and released on December 16.

(Source: Cailian Press)