Scott Horsley

There's also less confidence that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates again at its next meeting in December.

Walmart shares opened down after the retail giant announced that CEO Doug McMillan will retire early next year.

After more than a decade in the job, McMillan will continue to serve as an advisor at Walmart, while the head of the company's U.S.

business, John Ferner, takes over as CEO.

Walmart sets to report quarterly earnings next week.

Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.

We don't have a good read on that.

The government's monthly jobs tally was delayed by the shutdown, along with a lot of other government economic data.

We should get the September jobs report pretty soon.

That was almost finished when the shutdown began.

But when it comes to the October report on both jobs and inflation, the government's really starting from scratch, and so it could take some time to reconstruct those.

It's never happened before, and it's not at all clear it will happen this time.

The government did skip a few minor reports after the 2013 shutdown, but we've never had a major economic indicator that was just left blank forever.

Even during the early months of the pandemic, when government price checkers couldn't go out to supermarkets and scan the 40,000 grocery items they usually do, they found workarounds.

Investors have mostly had to do without official government economic reports during the shutdown.

The federal workers, who typically keep tabs on jobs, prices, and spending, were among those furloughed.

Now that the shutdown is over, government number crunchers will play catch-up, trying to give workers, businesses, and financial markets a clearer picture of where the economy's been during the last six weeks and where it might be going.

Stock in the Walt Disney Company opened down after a mixed quarterly report.

Disney theme parks are drawing big crowds, and its streaming service is doing well, but Disney's TV networks and some of its movies have struggled.

Asian stocks were mostly up overnight.