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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
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.
- 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.
- CommentaryInfrastructure
Local infrastructure is limited by the people who can run a project, not by the price of money
The ten-year Treasury rose from 0.89 percent in 2020 to 4.29 in 2025 and nonresidential construction spending rose alongside it, from 856 billion dollars a year to 1,309. What complicates the argument is that the only capacity measure held here counts business and financial operations workers across every industry, not the staff of any city hall.