Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, claimed Thursday that federal jobs data from October may never be compiled, thanks to the extensive government shutdown.

Hassett appeared on Fox News with Bill Hemmer, who played a clip of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blaming the Democrats for damaging “the federal statistical system with October CPI (Consumer Price Index) and jobs reports likely never being released,” Leavitt said Wednesday. “And all of that economic data released will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period.”

Hemmer asked Hassett, “Is this going to happen or is there another way to make that up?”

“There is basically two surveys that they make,” Hassett began:

They have something called the payroll survey and then the household survey. The payroll survey is firms mailing in records and firms that forgot to mail in records because of the shutdown, they could mail them in retroactively. The household survey is where people call people up and say, “How are you doing today?”

The household survey wasn’t conducted in October, and so we’ll get half the employment report. We’ll get the jobs part but we won’t get the unemployment rate. And that will just be for one month. But it probably is true we probably will never — we’ll probably be able to concoct something, but we’ll never actually know for sure what the rate was in October.

Hemmer asked, “What do you think the number is that hit the economy in losses financially? How many billion?”

“You know, the CEA (Council of Economic Advisors) guesstimates it’s about 15 billion a week,” Hassett said. ” So that adds up. you can multiply it out yourself. The thing is, because of the airlines being slowed down and everything, the CEA now estimates it lost 60,000 American jobs — not for government workers—  just because of the reduced output. So right now I think we’re looking at GDP (Gross Domestic Product) fourth quarter 1 1/2% lower than it would have been if we didn’t have the shutdown.”

Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics back in August after jobs data came out that he did not like. His replacement for the job withdrew his nomination in October, following weeks of scandal and widespread concern that he was not qualified.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

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