For the first time in history! The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics cancels the release of the October CPI report, and the November report will not include month-over-month changes.

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The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has canceled the October Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, stating that it was unable to collect some data during the U.S. government shutdown and that this data cannot be made up afterward.

BLS said it was still able to obtain some price data for that month and will release October’s relevant figures in the November CPI report “where possible.” The November CPI report is now scheduled for release on December 18, which is after the Fed’s final meeting of the year.

This announcement comes right after BLS decided to cancel the October jobs report for similar data collection issues. Economists had previously pointed out that, because a large amount of the data relies on labor-intensive collection methods, the CPI was one of the reports most likely to be canceled. BLS stated that most non-survey data can still be collected retroactively.

Emily Liddel, Deputy Commissioner for Publications and Special Studies at BLS, stated in an email:

The number of indices composed of non-survey data is very limited. There will be no overall CPI or core CPI published in October 2025.

According to decades of news archives since 1994, this will be the first time the agency has ever skipped publishing the monthly CPI report. Earlier this month, the White House stated that the October jobs and CPI reports “most likely will never” be released.

According to BLS, the November report will not publish month-over-month percentage increases for items for which October data is missing.

CPI, as a core indicator for measuring U.S. inflation and affecting the incomes of over 100 million people, relies primarily on survey staff physically visiting retail stores and service establishments across the country to collect the prices of thousands of goods, accounting for about 60% of the entire sample; the remaining prices are collected by phone, online, and through third-party channels.

Although no data collection staff worked during the shutdown, BLS employees were called back last month to compile and release the September CPI report, so that the Social Security Administration could calculate the annual cost of living adjustment (COLA).

Before the shutdown, BLS was already facing staffing shortages, forcing it to suspend some CPI sample collection in recent months and to a greater extent rely on certain types of estimation methods to fill the gaps. Since President Trump fired the previous BLS commissioner in August, the agency has had no official commissioner, and one-third of senior leadership positions have been vacant for months.

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