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- CommentaryIndustrial Policy
Announced investment is not a statistic and industrial policy should stop being scored on it
Construction spending on manufacturing plant rose from an annual rate of 82 billion dollars in 2021 to 215 billion in 2025, while the manufacturing output index moved from 97.6 to 97.3 on a 2017 base of 100. Lag complicates the comparison: a plant paid for in 2024 reaches an output index years later, which argues for waiting rather than scoring the policy on its announcements.
- CommentaryWorkforce & Skills
A national credential is built for a job market no state actually has
The Bureau's 2025 occupational file lists twelve local specialities for each of 51 jurisdictions, 612 rows holding 351 different occupations, and 204 of those appear on exactly one state's list. The same file records no credential at all, so an employer certificate would have to publish numbers a stranger can count before it could replace the system it criticises.
- CommentaryHousing Supply
Federal policy cannot raise housing supply and should pay for authorisations instead
Idaho authorised 0.98 new private housing units per thousand residents in July 2026 and California 0.21, a ratio of 4.66, under the same federal tax code and the same policy rate. Idaho's house-price index has still multiplied 8.78 times since 1980 against California's 9.75, so authorising more has not by itself held appreciation down.
- CommentaryMigration & Demography
The labour-force series do not record who arrived, and participation is not a substitute
No file on this site records a worker's place of birth, so nothing here can attribute a share of recent capacity to migration. The rate usually offered as a stand-in fell 0.2 points between 2023 and 2025 while prime-age participation rose 0.3 points to its six-year high of 83.6 percent, a divergence the two different populations can produce with nobody arriving at all.
- CommentaryIndustrial Policy
A state incentive buys a location decision, not national capacity
Plant construction spending rose from an annual rate of 75 billion dollars in 2020 to 244 billion in 2024; manufacturing output ended 2025 4.3 index points above 2020, and employment three hundred thousand below its 2023 peak. Plant takes years to run, so those readings are not yet a verdict.
- CommentaryWorkforce & Skills
Administrative capacity should be counted in decisions per qualified head, not in the occupational group that carries its name
Office and Administrative Support is the largest occupational group in the country, 17,753,410 jobs of a 51-state total of 155,495,750. The District of Columbia, where administration is the industry, ranks last of the 51 on it, at 76.871 such jobs per thousand against Tennessee's 129.94.
- CommentaryIndustrial Policy
A facility count is not a pollution count
Our environment dataset holds one number per state, the count of facilities reporting to the EPA Toxics Release Inventory. It is a measure of industrial density, the file says so plainly, and I am not going to chart it.
- CommentaryWorkforce & Skills
Jobs are counted where they are done, not where workers live
In July 2026 the District of Columbia held 179.7 jobs for every 100 people in its own labour force, and Maryland held 87.9. The two numbers are measuring different things, and state rankings that put them side by side quietly mislead.
- CommentaryEnvironmental Permitting
Whether permitting is slow can only be answered by counting the applications still waiting
Housing units authorised by permit fell from an annual rate of 1734 thousand units in 2021 to 1431 in 2025, a drop of 303. That series counts decisions leaving the permitting system and never the applications sitting inside it, and a count of departures is consistent with any waiting time at all.
- CommentaryIndustrial Policy
The industrial policy number nobody sets a target for
Output per hour in the nonfarm business sector stands 18 percent above its 2017 base. No industrial programme claims that gain, none is measured against it, and it is the only number that decides whether domestic production survives domestic wages.
- CommentaryRegional Development
Four states now fund themselves on a price they do not set
Severance is 47.2 percent of North Dakota's state tax collections and 43.9 percent of Alaska's. That is not a revenue line. It is a position in a commodity, held by a government that has to write a budget every year.
- CommentaryIndustrial Policy
Semiconductor subsidy should be judged on demand met at home, not on fabs opened
Construction spending on manufacturing plant fell from an annual rate of 244 billion dollars in 2024 to 215 billion in 2025, while U.S. semiconductor production rose from 144 to 165 on a 2017 base, its largest step in five observations. The two yardsticks now available disagree about the same year, and the one that should settle the question appears in none of this data.
- CommentaryWorkforce & Skills
The binding constraint on American port throughput sits inland, not at the berth
The occupational file puts the three heaviest concentrations of transport and material-moving work in Kentucky, Tennessee and Indiana, none of which fronts an ocean, and puts California, Florida and New York below the national share. No series held here counts a container, a berth or a crane, so the inland reading is an inference from where the work is counted.
- CommentaryWorkforce & Skills
Defence capacity is a tooling and workforce problem procurement reform does not reach
Construction spending on manufacturing plant ran at an annual rate of 125 billion dollars in 2022 and 244 billion in 2024, while core capital-goods orders held at a monthly average of 77 billion in 2022 and 77 again in 2025. This site holds no defence series at all, so the argument runs through the civilian base defence buys from.
- CommentaryEnergy & Power
Interconnection queues are a pricing failure, and faster studies will not clear them
The charge a project faces for connecting to the grid cannot be known when the decision to build is made, because it depends on which other applications are studied first, and a charge settled that way is a draw rather than a price. No series in this brief measures a queue, so the case rests on mechanism and on what the priced parts of the system already show.
- CommentaryDevelopment Finance
A development institution should give up the senior position and hold the first loss
The United States ran a current account deficit in every year from 2020 to 2025, averaging 147 billion dollars a quarter at the start of that window and 294 at the end, exactly twice as wide. An institution that gives up the senior position will report a smaller book and a worse loss record, and both are the point.
- CommentaryIndustrial Policy
The order book everyone quotes is measured in dollars that changed size
New orders for durable goods reached 311.2 billion dollars in 2025, the highest reading in five years. It is a current-dollar figure stated as a monthly rate, and it is routinely read as neither of those things.
- CommentaryInfrastructure
The permit counts say permitting is not the binding constraint on American delivery
Housing units authorised by permit fell in each of the four years to 2025, from an annual rate of 1734 thousand units to 1431, while spending on manufacturing plant rose from an annual rate of 75 billion dollars in 2020 to 244 in 2024. Neither series records a waiting time, so neither can show a queue; plant spending fell 29 billion in 2025, the year the policy rate came down.
- CommentaryDevelopment Finance
Mobilised volume is the wrong test of a development finance institution
Mobilised volume counts the private dollars that closed alongside a public commitment, and it can be audited on the day the deal signs. Additionality asks whether those dollars would have moved anyway, which nobody can observe, and an institution that adopts the harder standard will report a smaller number for more difficult work.
- CommentaryDevelopment Finance
Adaptation keeps losing to mitigation because an avoided loss is not a cash flow
The ten-year Treasury averaged 0.89 percent in 2020 and 4.29 percent in 2025, and at those rates a dollar of avoided damage arriving in thirty years is worth 76.7 cents and 28.4 cents. Turning that dollar into a cash flow needs a named obligor, and the party that funds a defence is rarely the party whose balance sheet it repairs.