The first Friday of October came and went without new jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Investors accustomed to dissecting every payroll figure were left flying blind, forced to rely on private trackers and early state filings that suggested the labor market merely “plodded along” in September.

Just weeks earlier, the BLS had revised its prior-year data, revealing that 911,000 fewer jobs were created than initially reported. That adjustment, based on employer tax records rather than surveys, estimated what many believed was a resilient labor market into one that’s been quietly losing steam.