For Americans concerned about the U.S. job market, it’s become increasingly difficult to be optimistic. Indeed, in the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, job growth has slowed to levels unseen since the Great Recession.

The good news is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not release another round of discouraging data. The bad news is that this happened because the agency wasn’t able to release any new data.

On the first Friday of the month, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, the BLS releases a closely watched employment report that is scrutinized by observers around the world. But on the third full day of the government shutdown, the bureau is closed, which, as The New York Times reported, means “close watchers of the economy were left rudderless.” From the article:

The agency’s measurements of wage growth, unemployment and job creation guide investors allocating capital and monetary policymakers deciding whether the economy needs a boost. Without the data, the outlook is foggy as hazards abound, so businesses could be even less willing to make decisions about the future.

The absence is itself problematic. The Times quoted one private-sector economist who explained in a note to clients, “In this environment, the risk of slower growth stems from reduced visibility into the economy in an already uncertain period, and less so from the shutdown itself.”

Complicating matters further, there is some recent data related to the U.S. job market, including figures this week related to private-sector hiring — and that information only reinforced fears of a weak employment landscape for Americans.

Despite these facts, Trump’s labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, appeared on Fox Business and boasted about the recent “momentum” in the domestic job market.

In fact, the Cabinet secretary used the word “momentum” more than once during the segment, leading viewers to wonder whether she fully understands the meaning of the word.

This is not an area of subjective debate: As a straightforward and quantifiable matter, the American job market during Trump’s second term started poorly and has gotten worse. In the months following the implementation of the White House’s trade tariffs, job growth slowed in the U.S. to levels unseen since 2009 (excluding the early months of the pandemic in 2020).

Even Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, who’s not exactly known as a critic of the administration, felt the need to remind Chavez-DeRemer, “Well, I mean, you know the data, though. You know where we are. I mean, we’ve had three months of slowing jobs.”

The labor secretary replied that officials have “seen the numbers kind of hold steady.” In a way, I suppose that’s true. But when jobs data “holds steady” near zero, that’s not encouraging.