There aren’t a whole lot of economic data releases on the calendar this week thanks to the ongoing government shutdown. That said, there will be a delayed version of the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index this Friday.

That report was supposed to come out last Wednesday, Oct. 15. But the effect the government shutdown is having on the government data-collecting machine will have implications for the public and private-sector data that this economy relies on.

Economists have reason to be concerned about upcoming government data releases. Including this Consumer Price Index.

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the BLS, which puts out the CPI, their operations have essentially been curtailed,” said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist with Charles Schwab, a Marketplace underwriter.

Sonders said the big concern is government workers haven’t been collecting price data this month. Same goes for jobs numbers.

“Once we get the October report, that is obviously not going to be clean data, because the government was shut down for that period,” Sonders said.

That’s because even if the government finally cobbles together a report the data might be less reliable, said Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin.

“The question is: How much of it is backwards looking, how much is guesswork, how much is related to other series that they think are correlated with the missing data?” Chinn said.

The government shutdown is affecting private sector data, too. Justyna Zabinska-La Monica is senior manager of business cycle indicators at The Conference Board. Her company was supposed to release a report today called the Leading Economic Index, which relies on government data that hasn’t come out. So, The Conference Board held off.

“We don’t want to publish something which is not up to the standards we’re standing behind,” Zabinska-La Monica said.

She said The Conference Board will get back to releasing the index when government data starts coming out again. But she’s going to keep an eye out for shifts in that data that might not reflect reality.

“And maybe look at those data with a little bit of skepticism, considering that it might not fully reflect the time that’s usually covered,” Zabinska-La Monica said.

And skepticism about the economic data can have consequences.

“If we don’t know what the quality of the data will be. Maybe it’s good, but maybe it’s not. Well, that’s uncertainty. That’s risky,” said Laura Veldkamp, a finance professor at Columbia University.

That can cause companies to freeze up.

“What firm wants to say, ‘Let’s engage in a risky and costly new investment project, that has uncertain rewards, in an environment where you don’t have clear information about what the current state of the economy is,’” said Veldkamp.

She said that’s why unreliable data can take a toll on the broader economy.