Matt Grossman

As everyone who's driven in the last couple weeks knows, gas prices are already a lot higher.

So I think this report best serves as a baseline for where things stood before the war.

Things were already a bit hotter than the Fed wanted in January, and economists are on the edge of their seat to see how much of an increase we get once we get the March data.

The Fed in January felt their policy was in a decent place to watch inflation gradually fall back to that 2% level over the course of the year.

And maybe they could find opportunities for a cut or two.

Of course, that was before we knew this war in Iran was coming.

The fear would be that not only does that translate into higher gas prices, but

Higher prices for everything else, too, because so much of what we buy has to get shipped.

So at the margin, traders have seen the war news as being more on the pessimistic side for actually getting those rate cuts this year.

In a broader sense, these numbers have started to look a lot less dependable than they used to.

You know, we seem to be in a world now where occasional government shutdown is the rule rather than the exception.

And it just gives investors another thing they have to keep on their minds, not just what are the reports going to say, but when are they going to come?

It seems likely that the shutdown might not last quite as long, but until they actually get that vote done, we're just in a holding pattern again.

In normal times, investors rely on data from the BLS every week and every month to get a sense of what's happening in the economy.

private sector produces some reports that cover parts of the same information and let you piece together a picture of what's happening out there.

But none of it is as comprehensive as what the government produces.

And so when you're not getting these reports, you are trying to piece together a puzzle that's always going to be a bit incomplete.