Maybe. This kind of lag hasn't made a noticeable difference over the past few years (when we've had several bursts of high profile layoff announcements, often in white collar sectors), but always possible this time is different

My forward-looking statements are often contrary indicators so perhaps we're screwed

7/ Still a mystery why growth in google searches for unemployment insurance is spiking even though initial claims are not...

6/ Still, the total amount of federal worker continuing claims is very small as a share of total continuing claims...

5/ Federal initial claims continue to plummet (but are still elevated).

Federal continuing claims continue to rise rapidly.

Soon we'll find out how much is the shutdown (temporary), how much is RIFs (permanent).

4/ IT'S OVER WE'RE SO BACK

3/ Nothing troubling in regular continuing claims either (week ended 11/01). Modestly above year-ago levels, consistent with the same very slow ongoing deterioration of the past >2 years.

2/ Maybe something bad is around the corner but it hasn't happened yet.

Next week's IC data will be the last to include part of the shutdown period.

The reason we won’t know for sure what the unemployment rate was in October is because (due to the shutdown) the BLS didn’t collect the relevant source data for that indicator

I know those are the headlines, but possible they were mistranscribed or don't know what they're talking about. (They could just be talking about the October report.)

i.e. I wouldn't conclusively assume based on those headlines that the November jobs report will exclude October CES data.