Thursday, October 23, 2025

Immigration Restrictions are 'Red Herring' for Unemployment, Says Dutta

Oct 23, 2025 Latest Videos

Renaissance Macro's Chairman, Jeff deGraaf and Head of Economic Research, Neil Dutta discuss the path of markets and the overall US economy into 2026.

The Federal Reserve is no longer receiving data on private-sector employment from an independent provider, adding to policymakers’ lack of timely information on the economy amid the ongoing federal government shutdown.
Payroll services firm ADP Research stopped providing the data, which covers about 20% of the US private labor force, after an Aug. 28 speech by Fed Governor Christopher Waller that referenced the statistics, according to a person familiar with the situation.
It wasn’t immediately clear what triggered ADP’s decision.

MishTalk

19 hours ago

Flying Blind: ADP Stops Giving the Fed Access to Its Private Jobs Data

The spokesperson for the firm, which had been providing the data to the Fed for several years, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The continued lack of access to the data, first reported by The American Prospect, comes at a difficult time for the Fed. Because of the government shutdown, federal statistical agencies have mostly ceased producing economic reports.

That’s obscured policymakers’ understanding of economic developments as they approach their policy meeting set for Oct. 28-29.

Officials are expected to again lower interest rates at that gathering, but are facing a thorny policy outlook as they seek to balance signs of a weakening labor market with lingering inflation concerns.

A "red herring" is something that is intended to mislead or distract from the main issue, acting as a logical fallacy or a literary device. This can be a misleading clue in a story, an irrelevant argument to divert attention in a debate, or a preliminary financial prospectus that is not yet approved. The term likely originates from the practice of using a strong-smelling smoked herring to throw hunting dogs off the scent of a trail.