(Reuters) -The U.S. unemployment rate likely was 4.3% in September, unchanged from August, according to a new “real-time” estimate from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago published on Thursday.

It was only the second time the regional Fed bank has published its new metric, which is based on the government’s Current Population Survey as well as data from non-government sources such as the online job site Indeed and Google.

It is planned for release twice a month and is designed to give policymakers an early sense of a key labor market statistic rather than substitute for it.

But with Friday’s publication of the official monthly U.S. employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics now delayed indefinitely by the 15th government shutdown since 1981, the regional Fed bank’s estimate

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