#government shutdown

#government shutdown

A likely partial government shutdown after Friday would impair the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's operations, leading to diminished capabilities in critical areas including cyber response, security assessments, stakeholder engagements, training exercises and special event planning, a top official said this week. CISA would furlough a majority of its workforce and just one-third would remain on the job under shutdown conditions, agency acting director Madhu Gottumukkala told House appropriators on Wednesday.

The monthly jobs report, a Friday tradition, is coming out this morning, five days later than originally scheduled due to the partial government shutdown. Economists expect the US added 65,000 jobs in January and unemployment remained at 4.4%. Investors are looking at the January jobs report to see if the job market has continued stabilizing following a difficult 2025. The US added only 584,000 jobs last year, the lowest employment growth since 2003, excluding recessions.

A fiscal centerpiece of President Donald Trump's agenda so far has been his pledge to lower taxes, and Americans are close to seeing healthy refunds from their 2026 filings. But actually seeing those returns show up on time might not be so straightforward, according to a recent federal watchdog report, largely due to another of Trump's signature policy stances. The Trump administration's purge of the federal bureaucracy last year did not spare the Internal Revenue Service, the agency responsible for collecting taxes and processing returns.

The US dollar traded in a consolidation phase on Wednesday, as a partial government shutdown continues to delay key economic releases and keeps investors in a wait-and-see mode. With job data postponed, markets are temporarily deprived of fresh evidence on the health of the US labour market, limiting directional moves in the market. Markets could react to new data, including the ISM Services PMI figures release later today.

Ben Casselman reporting for the New York Times: The Bureau of Labor Statistics will not release monthly jobs numbers on Friday as scheduled because of the partial government shutdown, said Emily Liddel, an associate commissioner for the bureau. The report, one of the most closely watched economic indicators each month, would have provided data on job growth, unemployment and wages in January, as well as annual revisions to employment estimates from 2024 and 2025.

The US Senate approved a major government funding package on Friday, after the killings of two US citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis upended spending talks and gave out-of-power rare leverage over Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign. In a 71-29 tally, the Senate overcame last-minute opposition from a handful of Republicans to rally behind a deal the president struck with Democrats, an unusual display of bipartisanship as tensions rise nationally over the presence of ICE in American cities.

If the second Trump administration has been a metaphorical firefight over whether the U.S. is a democracy or a theocracy run by Christian nationalists, Democrats didn't bring a hose-they brought a couple of water balloons to fuck around with. They've caved, insulted voters and each other, and given everyone brain-splitting migraines. And when Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent on January 7, they still didn't say anything about blocking the budget bill that would give ICE another few billion.

Millions of Americans are facing a huge increase in the amount they have to pay for health insurance. A dispute about government subsides for healthcare was one of the major issues that led to a 43-day shutdown of the US government last year the longest in history. But even when the shutdown ended, Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on and extension of the the subsidies.

A much-delayed report shows the U.S. economy grew a robust 4.3% between July and September, fueled by consumer spending. STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: In July through September, the U.S. economy grew faster than economists had predicted. LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: That's according to a delayed report from the Commerce Department on GDP, the gross domestic product. The report is nearly two months late because of the government shutdown.

A contributing factor to this lack of productivity was President Donald Trump's increasing use of executive orders, often controversial and subject to multiple court challenges. So far in his second term, Trump has signed 224 executive orders, compared to the 52 he signed in 2017 and more than he did during his entire first term. President Joe Biden signed 76 in 2021, his first year in office.

US real gross domestic product rose at an annualized rate of 4.3% in the third quarter, exceeding the 3.3% expected and more than the 3.8% growth in the second quarter. "The increase in real GDP in the third quarter reflected increases in consumer spending, exports, and government spending that were partly offset by a decrease in investment," the Bureau of Economic Analysis said.

"We've done studies showing the reason a lot of people are leaving is because it's not functional, because of death threats, because they're not getting anything done," she said in an interview. "The polarization is just dramatically different from even from the 'good old days' when you had the Clinton impeachment, but you got things like welfare and tax reform done," said Comstock, who was a congressional staffer in the 90s and served in Congress from 2015 to 2019.

'It's likely a bit distorted,' said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the tax and consulting firm KPMG. 'The good news is that it's cooling. We'll take a win when we can get it.' Still, Swonk added: 'The data is truncated, and we just don't know how much of it to trust.' By disrupting the economy - especially government contracting - the shutdown may have contributed to a cooling in prices, she said.

The United States economy lost 41,000 jobs in October and November, and the unemployment rate has ticked up to its highest level since 2021 as the labour market cools amid ongoing economic uncertainty driven by tariffs and immigration policies. In November, the US economy added 64,000 jobs after shedding 105,000 in October, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Federal Reserve has one more decision in 2025 - and it will set the tone for where interest rates will go in the new year. On Wednesday, leaders at the central bank will decide whether to continue cutting rates or put a pause on loosening monetary policy. The call will have ripple effects across consumer prices, the job market, and Corporate America.

Amid wider economic uncertainty, some analysts have said that businesses are at a "no-hire, no fire" standstill. That's caused many to limit new work to only a few specific roles, if not pause openings entirely. At the same time, sizable layoffs have continued to pile up - raising worker anxieties across sectors. Some companies have pointed to rising operational costs spanning from U.S. President Donald Trump's barrage of new tariffs and shifts in consumer spending.