Trump administration set to release key inflation data for September despite government shutdown

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to release September inflation data Friday morning, despite a government shutdown that has crippled federal reporting and has no end in sight.

The September Consumer Price Index will be released at 8:30 a.m. EST and will mark the first release of a major economic report since the lockdown began on October 1.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones and Bloomberg expect the headline annual inflation rate to rise to 3.1% for the 12 months ending in September.

Month after month, it would be the same stubborn rhythm that has persisted for more than two years. An inflation rate above 3% is also significantly higher than the Federal Reserve’s annual target rate of 2%.

Profits also continued to rise with prices, reaching a new post-pandemic high in the second quarter of this year.

But for consumers, the rise in wages on paper does not appear to have dampened the rise in prices, according to several recent surveys.

Prices and inflation edged out tariffs to become the top concerns consumers reported in the Conference Board Research Group’s September survey. The closely watched University of Michigan surveys found that overall consumer confidence in October was down 22% from the same month last year.

On Wall Street and on Main Street, the Trump administration’s global trade policy and tariffs continue to loom large.

“We continue to expect tariffs to remain a source of goods price inflation in coming quarters,” Bank of America economists wrote in a client note earlier this week. They also predicted that a drop in used car prices would reduce the overall pace of inflation that appeared in Friday’s report.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote that they expected “an acceleration in headline inflation, largely driven by rising seasonally adjusted gasoline prices.” They also expect “food inflation to remain elevated,” according to a client note.

Whatever the CPI data reveals, many analysts expect it to have an outsized impact on U.S. markets as it comes amid a week-long blackout on government economic data.

It also comes less than a week before the Fed’s Oct. 28-29 policy meeting. There, committee members will discuss whether to lower interest rates again, which they are generally expected to do. The latest CPI data will help inform the Fed’s assessment of the US economy.

It will also prove a key factor in determining the Social Security Administration’s annual cost-of-living adjustment for 2026, known as the COLA. Inflation data from July, August and September are specifically used as benchmarks to help set the COLA for the coming year.

Like the CPI data, the Social Security Administration originally planned to release the 2026 COLA in mid-October, but it was delayed by the government shutdown.