This indicator is quickly going to become less relevant due to the shutdown. Construction spending data was supposed to be released today but wasn't and a host of other indicators will soon be missed.
After this morning’s release from the Institute for Supply Management, a decrease in the nowcast of third-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth from 3.4 percent to 3.2 percent was partially offset by an increase in the nowcast of real gross private domestic investment growth from 4.1 percent to 4.2 percent. The US Census Bureau construction spending report was not released this morning because of the government shutdown. We plan on maintaining the release schedule throughout the shutdown but will skip updates if there are no monthly data releases since the last GDPNow update.
In terms of actual impacts from the shutdown, it's estimated that the 35 day shutdown in Trump's first term (the longest ever) cut 0.1 pp of GDP.
