CommentairesÉclairagesPerspectivesDécryptages
Archives
163 articles
Articles
- ÉclairageEconomic Security
Nearly two thirds of the five-year export gain arrived in a single year
Exports of goods and services rose 0.47 trillion dollars in 2022 and then 0.03, 0.15 and 0.10. A series that never falls looks like steady growth until you write it as steps, at which point it looks like one event followed by three quiet years.
- DécryptageRegional Development
What a new business application actually counts
Business applications are the fastest local signal of new enterprise, and the most often oversold. By the end you will know what the filing is, how far it sits from a business with employees, and what the count cannot tell a city.
- PerspectiveIndustrial Policy
Each instrument of economic statecraft has its own published series and the doctrine meant to rank them has none
Construction spending on manufacturing plant ran at 75 billion dollars a year in 2020 and 215 in 2025, while manufacturing output on a 2017 base of 100 ended the window at 97.3. Every instrument of statecraft has a published series, and the ranking that says which instrument yields when two collide has none.
- CommentaireMigration & 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.
- DécryptageRegional Development
Building permits and what they signal before the construction shows up
A permit is an authorisation, not a building. By the end you will know why the series moves before construction spending does, and why a single month of it is close to useless on its own.
- ÉclairageTrade & Investment
Goods exports to mainland China are lower in 2025 than in 2020
The monthly average rose to 13 billion dollars in 2021, stayed between 12 and 13 for four years, then fell to 9 in 2025, the lowest of the six readings. Imports from China fell further in the same year, so the gap between the two series is at its narrowest while exports are at their weakest.
- CommentaireIndustrial 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.
- PerspectiveTrade & Investment
A foreign ministry cannot spend attention on fifty states, and should not try
California holds 39,431,263 residents and Wyoming 587,618, and each sends the same two senators to Washington. A ministry with a finite diary has to decide which of those two facts it is optimising against, because the rankings they produce are not the same.
- PerspectiveIndustrial Policy
In fifty of fifty-one jurisdictions the largest occupational group pays below the median
The biggest block of jobs in almost every American state is a below-median one, and in 47 of 51 it is the same group. Industrial work sits in the middle of that ladder, which is a better case for it than its advocates usually make and a smaller one than they claim.
- CommentaireWorkforce & 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.
- DécryptageInfrastructure
What makes an industrial site shovel ready
Site readiness is a list of specific permissions and physical connections, not a mood. By the end you will know what a certified site has actually cleared, what it has not, and which constraint usually decides the timetable.
- PerspectiveWorkforce & Skills
The labour force fell in 39 of 51 jurisdictions in a single month
Between June and July 2026 the civilian labour force fell in 39 states and the District of Columbia's column, and rose in twelve. The movements are tiny, they point the same way, and the file that records them cannot tell you whether that means anything.
- CommentaireIndustrial 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.
- DécryptageInfrastructure
What a permitting timeline is made of
A permit is the last document in a sequence, not a single decision. By the end you will be able to name the separate stages a permitting clock runs through, and say which of them a given reform would actually shorten.
- CommentaireWorkforce & 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.
- CommentaireEnvironmental 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.
- DécryptageInfrastructure
What a debt service coverage ratio tests
A coverage ratio is one division sum written into a loan agreement, and almost every argument about it is an argument about the definitions on either side of the line. By the end you will know what goes in the numerator, what the denominator fixes, and why a ratio measured in a good year says little about a bad one.
- PerspectiveWorkforce & Skills
The states that make the most things are not the states with the most engineers
Of the eight states where production work is most concentrated, four hold less than the national share of architecture and engineering jobs and two more hold barely the national share. That gap, not the incentive package, is the binding constraint on where a complex facility can be built and run.
- DécryptageEconomic Security
What refining capacity is, and why it is the bottleneck
Refining is the step between a raw material and a usable one. By the end you will know why it is harder to replace than a mine, why it clusters in a few places, and what a country that cannot refine actually lacks.
- CommentaireIndustrial 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.