January jobs report delayed indefinitely by government shutdown

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Feb. 2, 2026, that the January Employment Situation report would not be released as scheduled on Feb. 6 due to the partial government shutdown that began at midnight on Jan. 31. BLS Associate Commissioner ELEmily Liddel issued the postponement notice.

The partial shutdown was triggered when Senate Democrats blocked DHS funding after CBP agents killed Alex Pretti, demanding immigration enforcement reforms. The government reopened on Feb. 4 after the House passed the funding package, and BLS confirmed on Feb. 5 that the jobs report would be published Feb. 11.

The January 2026 jobs report, released five days late on Feb. 11, showed employers added 130,000 nonfarm payroll jobs — nearly double the 70,000 economists at LSEG had forecasted. Unemployment ticked down to 4.3% from 4.4%, and job gains concentrated in health care, social assistance, and construction, while federal government employment declined.

The delayed report included massive benchmark revisions revealing nearly 900,000 fewer jobs existed in March 2025 than originally reported. Revised data showed employers averaged only about 15,000 new jobs per month throughout 2025 — far weaker than the numbers reported in real time.

This was the fourth disruption to critical federal economic data since August 2025: President Trump fired BLS Commissioner EMErika McEntarfer in August 2025 after the July report showed only 73,000 new jobs; the USDA terminated its 30-year Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement in September 2025; a 43-day shutdown from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, 2025, suspended CPI data collection entirely with no retroactive collection.

The shutdown also delayed the January Consumer Price Index from Feb. 11 to Feb. 13 and pushed back the December Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS). The BLS published a full revised release schedule at bls.gov/bls/2025-lapse-revised-release-dates.htm.

BLS funding has fallen more than 22% in inflation-adjusted terms from fiscal year 2010 to fiscal year 2025, according to the Center for American Progress. FY2026 is expected to bring even deeper cuts, compounding the damage from repeated shutdowns to survey response rates and data quality.

On Jan. 30, 2026 — one day before the shutdown — President Trump announced he would nominate BMBrett Matsumoto, a longtime BLS economist with a PhD from UNC who served on the Council of Economic Advisers during both Trump terms, to replace fired Commissioner McEntarfer. Acting Commissioner WWWilliam Wiatrowski had been leading the agency in the interim.

A second DHS-only shutdown began on Feb. 14, 2026, when immigration enforcement reform negotiations stalled again, threatening further disruptions to federal data collection.