The Bureau of Labor Statistics remains without a permanent leader. President Donald Trump fired commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Aug. 1, and claimed that the monthly jobs numbers were “rigged” to make him look bad.

Companies across this economy use BLS data to make business decisions. But looming questions about the quality and regularity of BLS data moving forward, how does privately produced economic data compare to the official stuff?

Location is everything for a retailer like Tractor Supply, which sells farming gear and animal feed. The company’s motto? “For Life Out Here.”

“We serve customers in only certain geographies,” said Tractor Supply CFO Kurt Barton. “We do not have stores in urban America. A vast majority are exurban or rural.”

And that’s why the retailer relies on private data about consumer sentiment. That data is produced by the firm Morning Consult.

“They can parse that for exurban and rural — even in some cases to the zip code level,” Barton said.

This kind of specificity is a big reason there’s a market for private economic data, according to Michael Strain, an economist at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

“It’s an extremely helpful complement to government statistics,” he said. “You can get some really good information about the labor market, for example, from companies like Indeed.”

Another private option is ADP, a payroll management firm that offers an earlier look at monthly jobs data than the BLS.

But “it’s not a substitute for government statistics,” Strain said. “Government data, including BLS data, really are the gold standard.”

For one, said Strain, it’s freely available to the public. That’s helpful for small businesses that can’t afford private data. And the BLS uses sampling methods to ensure its data reflects economic conditions nationwide, he said.

“ Official government data are unmatched in their representativeness, in their ability to tell you what's going on with the labor market as a whole, with the economy as a whole,” said Strain.

Private firms are more limited. For example, ADP has tons of payroll information, but only about companies that are customers of ADP.

“We can't talk about the economy as a whole just using one company's data because there are no companies that really give us that full picture,” said Claudia Sahm, chief economist at New Century Advisors.

Many private data sources use government data as a benchmark to confirm their own accuracy, she added. “ The reality is the high-quality private sector data that are being produced, they depend on the high-quality government statistics.”

If government data gets curtailed in any way, “businesses, people, policymakers are gonna be making decisions with less information,” Sahm added.

And that could lead them to make the wrong decisions.