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When Washington Goes Dark: Why the Missing October Data Matters
Public domain image via The White House
Public domain image via The White House
A recent White House announcement about the October 2025 jobs and inflation data has some people concerned, including me.
The announcement probably isn’t what you were expecting, though.
For those who hate Trump, it doesn’t announce any kind of massive job cuts or massive spike in inflation.
For those who love Trump, it doesn’t announce any surge in job growth or radical reduction in inflation.
In fact, the big announcement about that data is that the Federal government isn’t going to release the October 2025 jobs and inflation data.
What does this mean?
Now, let me be clear, while some people will want to immediately leap to the conclusion that the government is trying to hide data (and to be fair, some administrations in the past have done exactly that: hide data), that isn’t why the October figures aren’t being released.
It’s actually an understandable reason, once you hear it. Jeff Cox with CNBC writes,
“The [government] shutdown made it extraordinarily difficult for economists, investors and policymakers at the Federal Reserve to receive critical government data,” [White House press secretary Karoline] Leavitt said.
So, it really comes down to not being able to gather the data most likely due to the furloughed federal employees during the shutdown.
But the reason why it happened doesn’t change the impact of the data not being released.
Banks, businesses, and investors all rely on government economic data to try to get a grasp on how the economy is doing so that they can make smart decisions for how to grow their businesses and investment portfolio values.
Bad data can cause them to make bad decisions. No data can cause them to make blind decisions.
Which is a huge problem for planning because without being able to correctly evaluate what is going on, it’s nearly impossible to make major plans and contingency plans to work from while having any confidence in those plans.
It’s like walking around a house when your power is out and you’ve just rearranged the furniture. You hope that you remember where everything is so that you don’t stub your little toe on the leg of your couch, but when you do stub that toe, it’s agonizing.
Goal planning without accurate data has the same problem.
And while I’ve mentioned banks, businesses, and investors who use that data for planning, they aren’t the only ones using that data for that same purpose.
Who else uses economic data for planning.
Two other organizations use that data to effectively plan ahead, and both of these organizations have a huge impact on your daily life.
Those organizations? The Federal Reserve and the federal government.
The Federal Reserve uses economic data to know whether to raise or cut interest rates. Either of those moves can seriously impact economic growth, job growth or loss, and inflation in the U.S.
And all of those affect whether you can afford to put food on your table.
The federal government uses those figures to try to make plans for how they can help to grow the economy which, really, means how much that they “should” interfere with the economy (which lends itself to another long discussion about how much of the U.S. economy is not a free market no matter what some anti-capitalist pundits want to claim).
But there is a bigger effect that the federal government has on the economy and your standard of living that you may not have even considered. After all, it’s not always easy to see it in the available data, and it’s impossible to see it there when data can’t be released.
(And make no mistake: the inability to release the October 2025 data will, intentionally or not, set a precedent that a future administration will likely exploit to choose to not release data simply because they don’t want to. Which is a potentially even bigger can of worms which would damage and could erase any lingering trust in the government and any trust in the government’s data in the future.)
But the government data that people tend to ignore which you really should be paying attention to is how much the government spends. The fact of the matter is that the federal Treasury Department notes that “federal spending was equal to 23% of the total gross domestic product (GDP)” in Fiscal Year 2025.
In other words, nearly one out of every four dollars spent anywhere in the U.S. economy was spent by the government.
Which is a massive amount of money ($7.01 trillion in Fiscal Year 2025, if you want the specifics).
And the effect of spending nearly one out of every four dollars by the government?
Well, as Investopedia puts it:
[E]xpansionary fiscal policy can spur inflation [...].
Translation: the more that the government spends, the more inflation that it causes.
But you don’t need me to point that out if you paid attention to the massive amount of spending during the previous administration… and the massive inflation that happened as a result.
You still see the results of that inflation every time that you go to the grocery store, every time that you buy school clothes for the kids, every time that you hope to plan a vacation to get some kind of reprieve from the stress of everyday life and of trying to make ends meet.
The sad truth, though, is that while so many people focus on the government’s economic data to make their big plans, most don’t take steps to remove their finances from the impact of the massive government spending that has been going on for decades (regardless of who was in the White House).
You, on the other hand, have the opportunity to do something that most any American can do but don’t do because they only pay attention to the government’s data instead of also looking around them to see reality with their own eyes and using their minds to make their own decisions.
The opportunity that you can take right now, though, to shield your family and yourself from the effects of massive government spending? Diversifying into precious metals now. You can find out more about diversifying into precious metals in a tax-advantaged way by getting more information about precious metals IRAs.
BGG - About the Author 
About Peter Reagan
Peter Reagan has covered precious metals and the economy for Birch Gold Group for over 15 years. His articles have been featured in several leading publications, including Newsmax and Zerohedge. At Birch Gold Group, Peter leverages his deep market insights to help educate website visitors and customers on why they should consider diversifying their savings into gold and other precious metals, and how that process works. Due to this commitment to education, his content has become a trusted source of information throughout the industry.
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