The federal government is about to reopen once again. But as everyone gets back to work again, I have to wonder how much data has been lost and how much will be reconstructed. Specifically, how big a gap will there be in the official data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics? One month? Two months? Three months? Hopefully the gap will be as small as possible, but it seems like we're going to miss at least one month of data on the jobs market and unemployment, with the possibility of a gap in the official inflation numbers as well.

The monthly jobs numbers regularly appear on the Friday following the end of a calendar month. The last such Friday when everyone at the B.L.S. was still at work was at the start of September. The last jobs report covered the month of August, to put this another way. So we are now missing data for September and October, and we're almost halfway through November.

Jobs data is collected in multiple ways, but the initial report is based on employment in the first half of the previous month. This number is then revised for the following two months, as different data sets come in. So the initial data for the month of September has already been collected, and the jobs data for that month was on the brink of being released when the shutdown began. This leads me to expect that the September numbers (for how many jobs were added or lost, and for the official unemployment rate) will appear very soon -- perhaps by the end of this week. When the shutdown started, they were days away from releasing these numbers, so it shouldn't take much work to finalize them.

The October numbers, however, might be problematic. Since nobody was at their desks in October, the data might not have been collected at all. And it might be impossible to reconstruct that data now. So at the very least, we may have a one-month gap for the October numbers.

Also, as stated, we're already almost two weeks into November, so the period for collecting this month's data is almost over. Perhaps the B.L.S. will be able to still collect this data and come up with numbers for the month of November, but this isn't guaranteed.

Perhaps the secondary data will be enough, however. The monthly numbers are revised twice after initially appearing, so perhaps there will still be enough data to work with. Perhaps at least partial data will be enough to come up with some sort of official numbers, or perhaps they will be listed with an asterisk to denote they were compiled with only partial data.

The jobs market and employment data had hit a point of inflection right before the shutdown, so nobody really knows what they're going to do next. When Donald Trump took office, a little over 100,000 jobs were being created each month. This rose, in April, to 158,000 new jobs. But then the numbers took a big dive. In May, only 19,000 jobs were created. In June, the numbers flipped -- we lost 13,000 jobs that month. July and August only have preliminary numbers (they haven't been finalized due to the shutdown), and while things seemed to pick up a little in July (79,000 jobs added), they slowed back down again in August (only 22,000 new jobs). Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has risen slightly, up to 4.3 percent

The jobs market is, quite obviously, going through a soft patch. Or at least it was, back in August. So what will the numbers for September show? As I said, things are possibly at a major inflection point, which is why the lack of data has been so frustrating. If there is a gap of one month (October) or more, by the time we do get new data things might have shifted even more dramatically (in either direction, to be fair).

The situation with the inflation rate is a little better than the jobs numbers, since the B.L.S. was forced to put out an official inflation number in the middle of October. This was necessary because Social Security needed it to base their annual cost-of-living adjustment on (since it was the final monthly number for the previous federal fiscal year). So September's official inflation rate was reported as 3.0 percent. No number has been reported for October yet, and they may run into the same problem as the jobs numbers (of not having collected data in October), so we may have a one-month gap in the inflation rate as well.

Inflation may or may not be at the same sort of inflection point as the jobs market. It has been creeping upward, but this has been fairly slow and gradual so far. Will it continue to do so? When an inflation number is released, will it be a little over 3.0 percent (where it would be if the trend continues unchanged)? Or will it have moved in a different direction? It could have spiked way up, it could stay the same, or it could even decrease -- nobody really knows, at this point.

Both of these data sets (unemployment and inflation) are always political fodder, as they paint a picture of where the American economy stands and where it may be headed in the future. And right now they're going to be very closely watched, since the Democrats just won several elections running on the issue of affordability. Donald Trump is in denial on the subject and insists that everything is fine -- according to him, all prices are way, way down, inflation doesn't even exist, and America is in a "golden age" of a boom time. But if the numbers keep getting worse, he's eventually going to have to confront the dissonance between his rosy outlook and the actual reality on the ground for average Americans. He may do so in petulant fashion, however -- when the jobs numbers first showed signs of softening, Trump's response was to throw a tantrum and fire the head of the B.L.S. His first pick to take over the agency had to be withdrawn because he was too extreme (and too unqualified) for even the Senate Republicans to swallow, but sooner or later Trump could install someone who will bring him the rosiest of numbers (no matter what the actual data shows). For the time being, though, the B.L.S. is still being run by competent and honest people, so their numbers are still trustworthy (for now, at least).

Democrats are currently planning on making the cost of living and affordability the centerpiece of their midterm election campaigns. So filling in the gap in the official employment and inflation data is going to be rather important. As I said, I am expecting at least the September jobs numbers to be quickly released, but the newer data will be even more important. Whether there will just be a one-month gap in the official numbers or not, it will be very interesting to see what the economy is doing when more recent numbers are finally released. Because the political landscape may significantly shift, depending on what the newer numbers have to say.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant