It's day seven of the government shutdown, which means we are solidly standing in a second

business week without crucial federal data. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kyrisdal. It's Tuesday, October 7th. Good to have you along.

Economists and economic journalists need data. Numbers give us a sense of where the economy has been, where the economy is now,

and where the economy is heading. But data, thankfully, come in many forms. Today we got some

from the private sector. The investment firm Carlisle released a report about employment in September.

The company estimates that just 17,000 jobs were created last month, which in the grand scheme of things is pretty paltry.

Carlyle is just one of many companies now providing this kind of data to the public. And because

nothing is ever really free, why would a private firm just offer

this up? Marketplaces Daniel Ackerman looked into it. Today's Carlisle report tells basically the

same story we've been hearing from other data sources. A pretty consistent picture of really

slow or stalled growth in the U.S. labor market.

Celeste Carruthers is a labor economist at the University of Tennessee.

And she says companies collect economic data in different ways.

Carlisle from their investment holdings, ADP from payrolls.

And because these firms are limited in how they're able to collect information,

Elise Gould,

with the Economic Policy Institute, takes these reports with a small grain of salt compared

to the federal data.

It's not that they're less trustworthy.

It's that they don't provide the same kind of comprehensive picture month after month,

year after year.

Gould says the government data is just richer.

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