Media Contact
Adam Allington
The White House says key economic reports for October jobs and inflation data may never be released because of the shutdown. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt cited data from DoorDash as proof that inflation is cooling.
Erica Groshen
Visiting Senior Scholar at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations
Erica Groshen, senior economic advisor at Cornell University and former commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says private sector estimates are not necessarily good substitutes for official federal statistics.
Groshen says:
“Some prices are always falling, even in the presence of overall inflation. So, it’s not hard to choose some group of products that has falling prices. Likewise, most private data are by-products of business activities; the underlying data are not designed to answer critical policy questions.
“I would be surprised if DoorDash or Walmart have much data on medical care and housing inflation which are large parts of consumers' market basket. And they don't have a long track record of providing reliable data.”
