The Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators combine real-time private sector data with official labor statistics to provide a timely and comprehensive view of labor market conditions. Updated twice monthly ahead of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment Situation report, the Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators include a layoffs and other separations (discharges and quits) rate, a hiring rate for unemployed workers, and a forecast of the monthly BLS unemployment rate.

*The Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators will continue to be published during the government shutdown. For more information on the shutdown’s impacts on the model and plans for addressing them, please refer to this October 10 FAQ document, also available in the download center below.

October 2025 (Advance)

The October 2025 reference week (October 12th through October 18th) for the BLS survey used to estimate the unemployment rate overlapped with the federal government shutdown that began in early October. This special factor is likely to be only partially reflected in the available data for the October 2025 Advance release of the Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators. The Congressional Budget Office expects that as many as 750,000 federal government workers have been furloughed during the government shutdown, representing up to 0.4 percent of the civilian labor force (as of August 2025 data).

Here are the latest estimates for October 2025 (reference week ending on October 18, 2025):

The figure below shows probabilities for possible values of the October 2025 BLS unemployment rate (originally scheduled to be reported on November 7, 2025), as predicted by the statistical model for the Chicago Fed Real-Time Unemployment Rate Forecast.

To estimate the October 2025 unemployment rate probabilities, we made an adjustment to account for the delay of the October 3rd release of BLS data for September. The probabilities shown below reflect the uncertainty in our model's estimate of the two-month change in the unemployment rate since its last reported value for August 2025. These estimates will be more uncertain than the one-month change probabilities that we typically report. For further details on why this is the case, see this October 10th FAQ. To help put these estimates into historical perspective, we have also updated the historical probabilities shown in the figure to reference two-month changes in the unemployment rate. A model-implied probability that exceeds its historical benchmark reflects an above-average likelihood for that particular range of unemployment rate changes and values.

Additional Details

The Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators include estimates of two rates summarizing flows into and out of unemployment that provide context for changes in the unemployment rate:

• Chicago Fed Layoffs and Other Separations Rate (inflow rate)
• Chicago Fed Hiring Rate for Unemployed Workers (outflow rate)

These rates are scaled in such a way that the ratio of the inflow to the sum of the inflow and outflow rates is in similar units to the BLS unemployment rate (i.e., percent of labor force unemployed).

Layoffs and other job separations (such as quits and discharges) represent the most common ways in which workers experience voluntary and involuntary unemployment. The Chicago Fed Layoffs and Other Separations Rate is an estimate of the percentage of previously employed workers that experienced a separation event (layoff, quit, or discharge) leading to non-employment in the reference week of the month used by the BLS in its Employment Situation report. As the Layoffs and Other Separations Rate increases, it puts upward pressure on the unemployment rate.

The Chicago Fed Hiring Rate for Unemployed Workers is an estimate of the percentage of previously unemployed workers that transitioned into employment (or out of the labor force) during the BLS reference week. When unemployed workers successfully find a job (or leave the labor force), it reduces the upward pressure on the unemployment rate coming from layoffs and other job separations. As such, an increase in the Chicago Fed Hiring Rate for Unemployed Workers puts downward pressure on the unemployment rate.

Our measures of the inflow and outflow rates of unemployment will generally differ from other similar constructs for three reasons. First, we use data from the Current Population Survey to construct our measures versus the BLS establishment survey (Current Employment Statistics). Second, our measures are constructed from aggregates and scaled in order to preserve a direct relationship with the BLS unemployment rate. Finally, we combine official statistics from the BLS with private sector data to create estimates of both rates that jointly reflect these different types of data sources.

For additional information, see Forecast Details.