Lots of corporate earnings reports are coming out this week, along with financial performance outlooks for companies over the next several quarters. That’s one of the main things investors want to get a sense of, since they buy stocks largely in anticipation of future earnings.

GM reported a mixed third quarter, with net earnings down and revenue flat, but it also issued an improved full-year profit outlook, which cheered investors. 3M and GE Aerospace also projected better financial results going forward. Coca-Cola had strong earnings, but its guidance didn’t improve for the rest of 2025.

Now, keep in mind: companies are making these sales and earnings projections, trying to figure out how the economy is going to develop and impact their performance, in a data drought. There’s almost no new government economic data to go on since the partial government shutdown began Oct. 1.

So, how reliable can these corporate earnings outlooks be?

To start with, big corporations have a lot of their own propietary data, known only to them. Reports coming in from the field about how much product is shipping from factories and warehouses, how fast it’s moving off shelves and out of showrooms, and their P&L, or profit-and-loss, statements, said Garrett Nelson, SVP of equity research at CFRA.

“(P&L are) updated on a practically daily basis, so they know exactly three weeks into the fourth quarter how their sales are looking, how their margins are appearing,” he said.

To make projections, they’re comparing all that to their numbers for previous years and quarters, said Yale University finance professor Matthew Spiegel.

“None of that involves any government data, right? That’s just what we’ve had sales of in the past, and what we’ve got booked now,” he said.

So far, then, not that much impact from the absence of government economic data. 

But in specific sectors, it can make more of a difference to corporate projections, said Spiegel: “Suppose you’re a housing builder. You might want to know where unemployment is high and where it’s low, so you know where to focus your construction.”

Still, there are private sector alternatives for some missing government data. 

The Mortgage Bankers Association, for instance, collects information on builder applications from lenders, said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s chief economist.

“And we use it to create an estimate to predict the Census Bureau’s new home sales number,” he said.

Fratantoni said it’s a replacement for the missing Census Bureau report, helping companies predict what supply, demand and prices might do in the coming year.

The lack of government economic data about how consumers are doing will matter more as time goes on — to retailers, manufacturers, and the Federal Reserve — gradually creating more uncertainty for corporate business predictions.

“You’re just going to see companies being a lot more conservative, cautious with the guidance,” said CFRA’s Garrett Nelson.

He said that can be a good thing for them. Because when companies low-ball their earnings outlooks, they can more easily beat them.