On November 19, 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced it could not collect household survey data for October 2025 due to Trump's 43-day government shutdown (the longest in U.S. history) and would not collect it retroactively. This marked the first time in over 900 months that the Current Population Survey failed to gather monthly employment data. October 2025 will permanently remain a blind spot in official U.S. employment records—no unemployment rate, labor force participation rate, or household employment data exists for that month.
The shutdown also caused cancellation of the October CPI report and multiple delays to GDP reports. Economists warned this creates 'a democracy that stops telling its citizens the truth about its performance.“ During Trump's 2018-2019 shutdown (35 days), BLS continued operations—the 2025 shutdown was handled differently. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett admitted: ”We'll maybe be able to concoct something but we'll never actually know for sure what the unemployment rate was in October. "