The federal government is still shut down. And that means no federal economic data (still).

But we do have a new set of economic indicators, courtesy of the private sector. The investment firm Carlyle on Tuesday released a report with an estimate of the employment situation for the month of September.

The news was not great: The economy created only 17,000 jobs last month. Carlyle is just one of the companies now providing this kind of information to the public.

But you might be wondering: Why would a private firm offer up this data for free?

The way a company collects economic data depends on what that company does, according to Celeste Carruthers, a labor economist at the University of Tennessee.

“Revelio is kinda drawing their estimates from online profiles — think LinkedIn. Carlyle from their investment holdings; ADP from payrolls,” she said.

Because these firms are limited in how they’re able to collect information, Elise Gould, senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, takes these reports with a small grain of salt compared to federal data.

“ It's not that they're less trustworthy,” she said. “It's that they don't provide the same kind of comprehensive picture month after month, year after year, that we're able to compare over time.”

The government data is just richer, Gould said. “We get very accurate information about demographics. So everything from race and gender to education level to where they live.”

Plus, the government is clear about how they take their samples and then turn those into economy-wide estimates. Not all private sector firms are so forthcoming, according to Preston Mui, senior economist at Employ America.

For instance, when it comes to the Carlyle report, “it's hard to say exactly how seriously to take it, because the details of exactly how they constructed the data were not really apparent,” he said. “They just said that it was based on their proprietary data set.”

Mui said there are some private datasets that just aren't available from the government, even when it’s up and running.

“ One that I really like is the Indeed Wage Tracker, which looks at wage growth in job postings,” he said.

As for why private firms would just publish this data for free, “we do it as a public service,” said John Challenger, CEO of the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. And he said they’re already keeping tabs on layoffs, since they work for firms that do those layoffs.

“It’s just the focus of what we do as a business,” he said. “We look for trends by industry and region. So we work hard at trying to create solid information that comes out at the beginning of each month.”

Plus, it doesn’t hurt that this kind of public service can also be good for business, per Gerald Cohen, an economist at the University of North Carolina.

“I think it’s a bit of marketing,” he said.

But Cohen added that with the government data on hiatus, it’s the best we’ve got.