Goolsbee Says Lack of Official Data During Shutdown Hard for Fed

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee said a lack of official data while the US government is shut down will make it harder for central bankers to interpret the economy.

Goolsbee reiterated concerns about a recent pickup in services inflation, which he said could mean price pressures are persistent in parts of the economy least impacted by tariffs. While there are many non-government sources of data on the labor market, the same isn’t true for inflation statistics, he said.

“If we aren’t going to have those, it’s problematic,” Goolsbee said Wednesday in a radio interview on American Public ...