CommentaryInsightsPerspectivesExplainers
Place
United States
163 pieces
Pieces
- ExplainerWorkforce & Skills
What a labour shortage claim needs before anyone can test it
A shortage is a claim that a market is not clearing at a stated price. By the end you will know the five things such a claim has to name, and why the same job carries different prices in different states.
- InsightsMacroeconomics & Markets
Four fifths of the rise in new business applications since 2020 came in a single year
The weekly average went from 84 thousand applications in 2020 to 104 thousand in 2021, and the four years since have added five. The 2025 reading of 109 thousand is the highest of the six, and also the third rise in a series that has fallen in the year between each one.
- InsightsMacroeconomics & Markets
The debt ratio fell for three years while the debt itself rose in every year the series records
Federal debt as a share of GDP fell from 122.3 percent in 2020 to 117.7 in 2023, then turned and reached 120.7 in 2025. The debt rose in every year the same file records, so what fell in those three years was the ratio and not the obligation.
- 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.
- InsightsHousing & Urban Development
Two years of decline have taken the mortgage rate 0.21 points off its peak
The thirty-year fixed rate peaked at 6.81 per cent in 2023, and the two annual readings since are 6.72 and 6.6. The federal funds rate ended those same two years 0.81 points lower, nearly four times as far, though it rose before it fell.
- PerspectivesRegional Development
The occupation that concentrates pays above its local median in every jurisdiction, and the occupation that spreads pays above it in ten
Computer and mathematical work pays more than the middle job in all fifty-one jurisdictions; production work does so in ten, six of which hold the country's lowest median wages. Production is also the more evenly spread of the two, at or above the national share in 27 jurisdictions against 13.
- ExplainerMacroeconomics & Markets
What gross domestic product counts, and what it leaves out
Gross domestic product counts production inside a border that reaches a final buyer. Knowing which dollars it is counted in, and which work it never sees, changes what the figure can be used for.
- InsightsWorkforce & Skills
The largest fall in job openings came in the year unemployment was lowest
Openings peaked at 11.2 million on the monthly average in 2022 and have fallen in each of the three years since, by 1.9 million, then 1.6 million, then 0.6 million. The largest of those falls landed in 2023, when the unemployment rate read 3.6 percent, the lowest of its six readings, and the smallest landed in 2025, when the rate read 4.3 percent.
- ExplainerWorkforce & Skills
Where an occupational wage estimate comes from
An occupational wage figure is a median, drawn from a survey of employers, for jobs located in one place. By the end you will know what the number leaves out, why the top of the scale is censored, and when two figures for the same occupation are not in conflict.
- ExplainerDevelopment Finance
How a sovereign wealth fund differs from a reserve fund
Both are pools of public money held outside the spending accounts, and the names are used interchangeably. By the end of this you will know the three rules that separate them, why a resource levy so often produces one, and why a central bank's reserves are a third thing again.
- 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.
- ExplainerIndustrial Policy
Manufacturing employment and manufacturing output measure different things
A country can make more while employing fewer people, and the federal series that track it will say so. This explains what each one counts and when each one is the right measure to cite.
- PerspectivesIndustrial Policy
What an allocator actually learns from four flat years of industrial output
Industrial production has spent five straight readings within 1.2 points of its 2017 base. That flat line is not evidence that nothing is being built. It is evidence that the aggregate cannot answer the question capital is asking.
- ExplainerTrade & Investment
How the trade deficit is computed
Several different subtractions are all called the trade deficit. By the end of this you will know which is which, what the matching entry on the other side of the ledger is, and why a balance is not a profit and loss statement.
- InsightsMacroeconomics & Markets
Average hourly earnings rose in every year of the window, and the price level rose by slightly more
Private-sector pay went from 29.36 dollars an hour in 2020 to 36.44 in 2025, a gain of 7.08 dollars with no down year. Restated at 2020 prices using the consumer price index, the 2025 figure is 29.30 dollars, about six cents below where the series started.
- CommentaryRegional Development
A house price index is not a house price
Maine's house price index stands at 1044.11 and California's at 974.97. Each state's index is anchored at 100 in the first quarter of 1980, which means the ranking measures appreciation since then and says nothing at all about what a house costs.
- CommentaryMacroeconomics & Markets
Six productivity readings cannot carry the case being made for artificial intelligence
Output per hour in the nonfarm business sector went from 109.1 in 2020 to 118 in 2025 on a 2017 base of 100, and the largest single step in that window, 3.3 points, landed in 2024 rather than 2025. The two fastest years for the ratio are also the two slowest years for payrolls, which is the shape a shrinking denominator makes as well as the shape a new technology makes.
- ExplainerIndustrial Policy
What a production subsidy actually buys
Governments underwrite factories in two different ways: by paying toward the building, or by paying for each unit the finished plant makes. By the end you will know which instrument a programme is using, and what each one can and cannot change.
- ExplainerIndustrial Policy
What upstream and downstream mean in an energy supply chain
The words split an industry into three stages with different economics, different regulators and different failure modes. By the end you will know where each boundary falls and why the stage a policy attaches to decides who pays for it.