The Bureau of Labor Statistics would be releasing the October consumer price index today, if it weren’t for that pesky government shutdown. With federal workers just returning to work, the critical measure of inflation will be delayed.

In fact, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that the October CPI and jobs reports may never be released. As the BLS gets back to work, it’s got some big decisions to make.

Skipping October numbers might be the Bureau’s only option, said Jesse Rothstein, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and former Department of Labor economist.

“Unfortunately, there's not really a way to make up for data that wasn't collected in October,” he said. “You can't really go to a store and look at the shelf and figure out what the price would have been a month ago.”

Rothstein said collecting data takes time.

“The household survey is one where they call something like 60,000 households each month and ask them a series of questions about how much they've worked and what their labor market experience has been. Obviously you need a lot of people to make that many phone calls, and it takes more than that many phone calls to get that many responses,” he said.

On top of that, the Bureau was already understaffed after cuts earlier this year, said Erica Groshen, former BLS commissioner.

“And so its ability to to redirect people, to reassign them temporarily, to ask people to do overtime to …  you know, all hands on deck approach that that ability is just definitely reduced. So it's just going to be harder,” she said.

Groshen said she’s an outsider now, but that BLS tends to prioritize seven principal federal economic indicators: the employment situation, consumer and producer price indexes, import and export price indexes, productivity, and the employment cost index. 

She said leaders could decide other reports, including the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, are less of a priority. Because if the November inflation and jobs reports were to be delayed, that would impact the Federal Reserve at its December meeting.

“That is the basis for so many of their decisions. So they will be flying blind. Well, not completely blind, but their windshield would be more cloudy than normal,” Groshen said.

Skipped or delayed data can affect people’s everyday lives. 

Employers use the numbers to make decisions on wages and hiring, said Michele Evermore, a senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance.

“These data go down to the state, local sectoral level, so that departments of labor and employment agencies can make decisions about how to deliver training and how to … help shape the economy on a local level,” she said.

Marketplace reached out to BLS about its priorities as it reopens, but did not hear back by deadline. In an email, the press office said “BLS will announce revised news release dates on this page as they become available.”