Government Shutdown December 2026: What Happens If Congress Misses the Dec. 11 Deadline

On Oct. 1, 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis stopped their regular releases. Over the 43-day lapse almost every scheduled report was postponed, and some never appeared. There was no October consumer price index release at all: the BLS said it could not collect October's survey prices during the lapse, judged collecting them afterward costly and potentially inaccurate, and later published October values only for a few indexes built from nonsurvey data.¹ The BEA canceled its advance estimate of third-quarter GDP, due Oct. 30, and folded it into a combined estimate on Dec. 23.² October's producer price data, the indexes many supply contracts use, arrived weeks late, folded into the November release on Jan. 14, after price requests for October went out on Nov. 19.³

The money runs out again on Dec. 11, five weeks from now, and the Congress that has to act is the outgoing one, whose term ends on Jan. 3. For a manufacturer, the risk is narrower than the politics: a contract that names an index the government may publish late, or not at all, and does not say what happens then.

Delayed is not the same as missing

What goes dark depends on which agencies lose their funding. After the 2018 midterm, the government partly shut down for 35 days, from Dec. 22, 2018, to Jan. 25, 2019. The Labor Department was funded, so BLS kept publishing, while the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis closed and their releases slipped. In 2025 the lapse covered the whole government, and BLS went dark too. A delayed index eventually arrives. A missing one leaves a hole the contract has to fill some other way.

What a clause can absorb

A well-written clause may already handle a delay. If it prices off the latest index published as of the adjustment date, carrying the last published value forward is exactly what it requires, and the late release changes nothing already invoiced. The trouble comes where a contract is silent: on whether a late or revised index triggers a true-up, on how long either side can claim one, and on what replaces an index that is never published at all. The BLS's own guide for contracting parties advises identifying the index precisely and providing for a successor in case an index is discontinued, and it warns that detailed indexes are more likely to have gaps.⁴

Five questions for an index-linked contract

• Which index applies, by BLS series ID, and which month's value is used on each adjustment date?
• If that value is not published by the adjustment date, which applies: the last published value, carried forward and treated as final; a provisional invoice, trued up when the index appears; or a postponed adjustment?
• If a value is revised after it has been used, does the revision trigger a true-up, and within what window?
• What replaces the index if a month is never published or the series is discontinued?
• Who bears the cost of a dispute, and how is it settled?

Have counsel review any change before it is signed.

Put the index value your contract names, and the one you would carry forward, through the material price variance calculator to see what each does to an invoice. Price an index-linked adjustment

The lame duck can also act

After the 2022 midterm, the outgoing Congress passed a full-year spending bill on Dec. 23, and the data never stopped. If this one does not, MFG Calcs keeps serving the last value each agency published, with the period it describes, and reports the series as due or stale once it runs past its usual publishing rhythm. It never fills a gap in a published series with an estimate. The producer price index for steel mill products on this site, for example, reads 388.58 for September 2026, the latest month the BLS has published.

Three provisions do most of the work: what happens to the price if the index is late, if it is revised, and if it never comes. If the contract does not say, find out before Dec. 11.

Further reading

• Revised news release dates following the 2025 and 2026 lapses in appropriations, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• BEA economic reports delayed, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Jan. 28, 2019, on the 2018 to 2019 lapse.
• Upcoming congressional fiscal policy deadlines, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, on the Dec. 11 funding deadline.
• Steel mill products PPI and the other live cost series on this site, each shown with the period it describes.