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Wall Street’s S&P 500 share index rose 1 per cent in afternoon trading, and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.7 per cent — in a fresh bout of volatility for equities. "Markets don’t care [about the data] because the data doesn’t pass the smell test," said Jon Hill, head of US inflation strategy at Barclays.

"Given the lack of explanation about how the BLS made these decisions, it’s hard to take at face value. Because it was such a big miss, and because it’s so hard for the market to take the data literally, investors don’t want to bet the house."

Analysts said the government shutdown distorted the figures. The BLS likely zeroed out some inflation readings for the period when it was unable to collect data, notably in housing costs, which accounts for a third of the headline figure. Black Friday discount deals in late November when surveys restarted may have also skewed readings lower.

Michael Hanson, a senior economist at Wall Street bank JPMorgan, said the lower than expected figures "suggest that the BLS may have held fixed a number of prices it was not able to collect in October, which likely means a material downward bias in the current numbers that will be reversed in coming months as full price collection resumes".