Friday is supposed to be the day when the Bureau of Economic Analysis puts out its monthly personal consumption expenditures report, which includes the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation.

That report, along with plenty of other data, is not coming thanks to the ongoing government shutdown. But we do have plenty of other clues about where inflation is right now and where it’s headed.

Inflation has been picking up this year, but there are a couple of factors that have been pushing against that increase.

In many parts of the country, rents have been coming down, noted Michael Pearce, deputy chief U.S. economist with Oxford Economics.

“We’ve had a lot of particularly new apartments completed over the last few years, a lot of new housing stock, and the demand just hasn’t been there, so we’ve seen this gradual decline in rents on new leases,” he said.

Wage growth has been slowing, too. That also takes pressure off of inflation, Pearce said.

“You know, at least two-thirds of the cost of most services actually come down to labor costs,” he said. “So if those labor costs are not rising as fast, we should see disinflationary pressure continue.”

But there are also plenty of factors pushing inflation higher, including the president’s tariffs. Those have already boosted inflation overall by almost 0.5%, Pearce said.

The budget law passed this year could also stoke prices, since the law’s tax incentives will stimulate business spending, according to Nationwide senior economist Ben Ayers.

“That should hopefully shift many of these businesses that have been trying to see how things settle out with tariffs back into expansion mode next year,” he said.

Ayers added that he doesn’t expect inflation to come down to the Fed’s 2% target at all next year.