Chinanews, October 24. According to a report by CNN, the Federal Reserve Board (referred to as the "Federal Reserve") is facing an unprecedentedly difficult battle to guide economic transformation despite the weak labor market and high inflation. The "shutdown" of the U.S. government is making this battle more difficult.

To formulate interest rate policies and other decisions that help the economy, the Fed relies heavily on the U.S. government to collect and publish official economic statistics, such as unemployment, retail sales, etc., while the government's "stop" began in early October to cut off the Fed's access to these data.

Just a week remains until the Fed¡¯s next interest rate decision, and Federal Reserve officials are in a partial ¡°blind judgment¡± when assessing whether additional support is needed in the labor market.August government data show that U.S. recruitment growth has fallen to the lowest level since 2010, and unemployment among American young people and ethnic minorities is also rising.

The Federal Reserve is dealing with multiple challenges: the Trump administration's ongoing attacks on its independence, the housing affordability crisis that the Fed lacks a full set of tools to address, the potential impact of artificial intelligence, persistent inflation, uncertainty about tariffs, and a downturn in the job market.

In the absence of government data, the Fed officials turned to other data sources to measure labor markets and consumer spending ¨C two key drivers of the U.S. economy and the focus of the relationship between the so-called balanced economic growth and stable prices.

The problem is that government data is undoubtedly the "gold standard" for measuring the world's largest economy. Without it, the Fed's decisions would not have sufficient information. According to American Outlook, after payroll software provider ADP terminated its data-sharing agreement with the Fed in August, the Fed may have fewer opportunities to obtain private employment data this time.

The last time Fed officials formulated monetary policy without key government economic data was during the 2018-2019 government shutdown. Minutes of the Federal Reserve's January 2019 meeting showed that in the absence of the U.S. Department of Commerce's monthly retail sales report, Federal Reserve officials chose to use credit card transaction and car sales data to analyze market conditions.

To safeguard the benchmark data for the annual adjustment of the cost of living of the social security system, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has recalled employees and will release the September 24 consumer price index.

Economists generally believe that data from the private sector cannot completely replace government data, and the lack of government data remains concerned, especially given that government data is the benchmark for many private sector data.