Investors Have to Wing It in the Shutdown; Numbers on Jobs, Oil, Corn and Other Important Indicators Are Casualties of Washington’s Gridlock—Which Could Leave Investors Flying Blind

October 2, 2013, 5:05 p.m. ET

Investors Have to Wing It in the Shutdown

Numbers on Jobs, Oil, Corn and Other Important Indicators Are Casualties of Washington’s Gridlock—Which Could Leave Investors Flying Blind

JUSTIN LAHART

As far as anyone can tell, the job market is holding steady. But until the government shutdown ends, who really knows? Wednesday, check-cutting giant Automatic Data Processing ADP -1.28% reported that private-sector employers added 166,000 jobs last month, a shade less than the 178,000 expected by economists. But the Conference Board reported its measure of online help-wanted ads reached its highest level on record. And on Tuesday, the Institute for Supply Management said its index of manufacturing employment rose to its highest level in more than a year.Absent the shutdown, these would have been just a preamble to Friday’s monthly employment report from the Labor Department, which economists expected to show a gain of 181,000 jobs. But with its publication on ice, investors, the Federal Reserve and businesses must rely on mostly private measures for a sense of how the job market is faring.

None of these are nearly as rich as the employment report. Take the ADP figures. Even putting aside the qualms many economists have over its methodology, it covers only jobs held at private-sector firms, while the so-called establishment survey used by the Labor Department includes government employers. The establishment-survey data also include important figures on how much workers are paid and how much time they put on the clock.

The jobs report also encompasses the entirely separate survey of households from which the unemployment rate, labor-force participation rate and other key measures are derived. Described by one prominent statistics textbook as a “massive and beautifully organized sample survey,” no privately produced survey compares.

The data vacuum doesn’t end with the jobs report. Key figures on international trade, inflation and retail sales will be postponed next week if the shutdown persists. So will the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s monthly crop report, a crucial indicator not just for commodities traders but farmers and food companies.

Meanwhile, the Energy Information Administration says it has funds available to release its petroleum and natural-gas reports through next week. If the shutdown continues to the point where it can’t provide those reports, energy traders will lack some of the few reasonably reliable, and regular, data points available in the global energy market. Heavy oil and gas users, such as chemical companies, would also have a tougher time gauging how things stand.

Left by a prolonged shutdown to rely on a mishmash of private reports and available government data, trying to figure out what the economy is doing is “like trying to fly a huge airplane with just a few instruments,” says economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics, which prepares ADP’s report. “You can fly it, but you can’t fly it very well.”

All of which would be bad enough without the threat of economic disruption from the shutdown and brewing fight over the debt ceiling. The plane could be flying into a storm.