Microsoft is offering buyouts to about a quarter of its staff as Anthropic files for a record IPO. Official Information payrolls in the big AI-hub states have already fallen since late 2022, even as Information real GDP and computer-systems-design output kept climbing.
Read the research →
Western mountain resorts are heading into winter 2026–27 with weaker advance bookings. Official payrolls through August 2026 still show Colorado’s leisure jobs above 2019, while lodging remains a thin slice of the state’s GDP.
Read the research →
Cindy Banda’s cancer bills and $4.29 gasoline are both on the midterm ballot. Official 2025 spending books still show health care, not motor fuel, as the larger American bill — including in Texas.
Read the research →
Audi's first U.S. plant is a $4 billion bet on Middle Georgia. Official payrolls and GDP books show a large factory state whose transportation-equipment jobs are real — and whose motor-vehicle output is still smaller than its aerospace book, and smaller than Alabama's.
Read the research →
The CDC posted a record-low U.S. fertility rate the same week the White House put $275 million into nursing-home nurses. Census projections already show a shrinking infant cohort and a doubling of 85-year-olds; household books already spend four times as much on nursing homes as on private K-12.
Read the research →
Official 2025 transfer receipts show Indiana’s Medicaid book still at a peak in dollars, but growth nearly stopped while the U.S. kept compounding — and hospitals and clinics kept adding payroll.
Read the research →
The White House spent the same week trying to cheapen diesel and cheapen homeownership. Official household-spending books through 2025, the last full year before the Iran war, show housing already eight times the motor-fuel tab.
Read the research →
Arkansas posted the most Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies in the country this quarter. Official books show family-farm income still falling into 2026, even as Iowa — the next-highest filer — bounced.
Read the research →
KFF says employees, especially at small firms, are shouldering bigger family premiums. BEA books show employer pension-and-insurance contributions at $1.82 trillion in 2025 — a smaller share of wages than in 2010.
Read the research →
Los Angeles Unified is staring at insolvency. Official local-government education jobs in the metro are already 7 percent below May 2019, even as California statewide recovered, health care boomed, and households spent more on college.
Read the research →
As the White House pitches a data-center 'dividend' and a national survey finds one in five households cutting groceries to pay power bills, the official consumption record shows the household electricity bill has grown from $187.3 billion in 2019 to $269.9 billion in 2025, up 44.1%, while gasoline spending rose just 18.8% over the same span. BEA regional data show New England's electricity bill grew fastest (48.4% since 2021) and the Plains slowest (18.9%).
Read the research →
New Mexico’s constitution would send a $25 billion Meta privacy penalty to education. Official books show that sum is large next to what the state already spends and produces on schools — and that the public-school workforce is still smaller than it was in 2010.
Read the research →
Named researchers are leaving U.S. campuses after federal grant cuts. Official books through August 2026 show private educational-services jobs still rising in California and Massachusetts. The drop that is already on the page is federal employment in Maryland and California.
Read the research →
California’s first statewide state-worker strike in 44 years is a slice of a much larger public payroll that has not shrunk, even as housing costs stay well above the national average.
Read the research →
Homebuilder sentiment just matched a 14-and-a-half-year trough, and 43 percent of builders are cutting prices. Official construction output is still about 30 percent above 2012 in real terms. The household housing bill, not the gasoline line, is the one that never stopped climbing.
Read the research →
GSK, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson just pledged billions of dollars and hundreds of factory jobs to Pennsylvania. Official payrolls and GDP books show a drug-making workforce that is smaller than New Jersey’s or North Carolina’s, and a household pill bill that already exceeds the state’s chemical-factory output.
Read the research →
A record share of families told the Fed they cannot forecast next year's income. Official personal-income books through mid-2026 show wages still dominate, but dividends, interest and rent now exceed government transfers — and real income gains since 2019 have been uneven across states.
Read the research →
A Prop 1 fight turns on a documented obstetric exodus. Official payrolls show Idaho’s hospital and clinic workforce still growing through August 2026.
Read the research →
Puerto Rico’s formal statehood petition lands on an official jobs book that is larger than Hawaii’s or Maine’s, still short of its 2000s peak, and no more government-heavy than several small states.
Read the research →
A formal statehood application lands on a payroll of 958,800 jobs — larger than New Mexico or Idaho in official counts, still about 105,000 short of its 2000 peak, and paying private workers far less than a similarly sized state.
Read the research →
Taiwan is raising at least $4 billion so smaller suppliers can follow TSMC and Foxconn to Texas. Official payrolls and GDP show Texas already has a large computer-and-electronics factory base — and that Arizona’s TSMC buildout has not yet shown up as a statewide hiring boom.
Read the research →
Ohio led the country in the drop of occupations that can still buy a typical home. Official spending, prices and construction payrolls show a cheaper housing market than the U.S. average, stalled real incomes, and more builders on the books—not a California-style rent spike.
Read the research →
September’s CPI put gasoline and air fares at the center of the last inflation print before the midterms. Official household books through 2025 show air travel already taking a larger slice of spending than before the pandemic — and, in Hawaii, Alaska and Florida, rivaling the pump.
Read the research →
An Ohio appeals court just called a $1 billion-a-year voucher program a second school system. Official payrolls and household spending books show public-school jobs almost back to 2019, a private K-12 bill already above $2 billion, and a much larger drop at state universities.
Read the research →
Social Security just announced a 3.6 percent raise for 2027. Official BEA books show how large those benefits already are, which states live on them most, and how far $75 a month goes against housing, health care and groceries.
Read the research →
Midterm campaigns in Iowa have made nitrates and cancer rates a ballot issue. Official spending and output books through 2025 show a farm economy off its 2022 peak, a household water bill that already runs higher per person than nearby farm states, and a health-care bill that still sits below the national average.
Read the research →
Official quarterly GDP through mid-2026 shows a United States still growing at about the IMF's 2.3 percent pace — with information and finance doing the lifting, while freight contracts and construction barely moves.
Read the research →
Official books show Missouri hospital jobs rising since 2010 even as maternity units closed. Household hospital spending and real hospital output rose faster than the payroll.
Read the research →
U.S. bankruptcy filings are up this year, especially among small firms. Official application counts and proprietors’ income show a split: more people are still filing to start companies, but fewer of those filings look like employers, and existing proprietors’ earnings had not cracked by mid-2026.
Read the research →
Marketplace health premiums are rising another 10 percent for 2027, and auto insurance already jumped more than 36 percent. Official consumption accounts show a smaller, net service charge — and a motor-insurance line that still ran ahead of paychecks.
Read the research →
Official payrolls in six states named in today’s plant-closure reporting show a mixed factory scoreboard since January 2025, while durable-goods output rose and nondurable output fell.
Read the research →
Rural Utah is fighting hyperscale campuses over water and notice. Official books show a tiny, stalled data-processing payroll, a much larger construction industry, and household power and water bills that still sit below the U.S. average.
Read the research →
A green-card freeze aimed at Microsoft, Adobe and Indian IT firms lands on state payrolls that have already cooled in Washington and California — while Texas is still adding professional-services jobs and California health care is doing almost all the hiring.
Read the research →
Official payrolls confirm a year-over-year decline in Brownsville-Harlingen’s tiny combined mining-and-construction series. They do not show a Texas construction collapse, and statewide construction pay rose more slowly than other private wages.
Read the research →
A Category 3 Gulf storm is a fuel story. Official books show the oil is in Texas; the plants that turn it into diesel sit on the Alabama-Mississippi-Louisiana coast — where households already spend more per person at the pump.
Read the research →
Dana Nessel’s Blue Cross lawsuit says premiums are too high and hospitals are being starved. Official spending books show Michigan’s hospital consumption per person is the lowest among nearby states — and its measured health-insurance service charge is far above the rest of the country.
Read the research →
Hurricane Isaias is shutting in Gulf crude while aiming at Alabama, Mississippi and the Florida Panhandle. Official 2025 GDP books almost none of U.S. oil extraction in those states — and a larger gasoline bill than the national average.
Read the research →
SEIU Local 1000 authorized a walkout of about 100,000 California state employees. Official books show a much larger state-government payroll, nearly half of it education in a typical August, and a housing bill that is high but not uniquely so.
Read the research →
A new advocacy tally says household water bills jumped 62% in a decade, faster than groceries. Official consumption books through 2024 show a big water bill — about $140 billion, or $411 a person — that rose with the grocery cart, not ahead of it.
Read the research →
Family homelessness in Maricopa County is at a 10-year high. Official spending, price and payroll books show Arizona’s housing costs overtaking the national average even as construction jobs boomed — and a national emergency-housing workforce that is still smaller than a mid-size city payroll.
Read the research →
A $4.3 billion uprate deal in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey is meant to keep AI load off household rates. Official spending books show those households already pay a $24 billion electricity bill — and the industry that needs the power has grown much faster than the one that supplies it.
Read the research →
Anduril wants a $3.7 billion Sparrows Point yard and more than 3,100 permanent jobs to feed Virginia-class submarines. Official payrolls show a U.S. shipbuilding workforce that is still smaller than in 1990, a Maryland factory base that never recovered after Bethlehem Steel closed, and existing Hampton Roads yards that already employ about ten times that permanent-job promise.
Read the research →
The White House is mailing $90 to 20.8 million Medicare Part B enrollees. Official household spending books through 2024 show how far that cheque goes against per-person health-care services, the $4.1 trillion health function, and a $270 billion insurance line.
Read the research →
Hyundai is putting $500 million into hybrid production at its Montgomery plant. Official GDP and payroll books show Alabama already runs a mid-sized auto industry — and that the jobs boom is broader, and older, than one new powertrain line.
Read the research →
Trump told Ohio it cannot switch data centers off. Official books show a small hosting industry, a construction upswing, shrinking information jobs, and a household power bill that has risen fast but is still below the U.S. average.
Read the research →
Home Illinois says the state lacks about 142,000 homes. Official spending, rent, construction jobs and real construction output show a housing bill that rose faster than real incomes — and still sits below the U.S. average.
Read the research →
Gallup just posted a record-low 31 percent of adults calling college “very important.” Official household spending books show the dollar bill for higher education kept rising through 2024, but as a share of all consumption it has fallen below its 1997 level. College-adjacent payrolls lagged the rest of the job market.
Read the research →
Bayer’s $2.2 billion New Albany plant promises 600 permanent jobs. Official books already show Ohio with tens of thousands of chemical-manufacturing jobs, more than $24 billion a year in chemical GDP, and a household drug bill that is large without being New Jersey’s.
Read the research →
A think tank says federal energy policy will add $6,500 per household through 2040, with Oregon, Mississippi, South Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming near $9,000. Official spending books through 2024 show Americans already paying more than $2,200 a person a year on electricity, gas, fuel oil and motor fuels — and two of those five states still sit below the national average.
Read the research →
New Mexico asked a judge to order Meta to pay $35–40 billion after a Cambridge Analytica-era privacy verdict. Official GDP, income and payroll books show what that request looks like next to the state’s entire economy.
Read the research →
Official CBP counts show Venezuelan border encounters collapsed to 0.2% of their 2023 peak while Mexican encounters persist at a fraction of peak — the backdrop to an immigration fight that now runs through visa files, court dockets and city streets.
Read the research →
Minnesota released spring test scores showing fewer than half of students on grade level. The official payroll and household-spending books show a school workforce that has been flat for 25 years, a shrinking slice of the state's job market, and K-12 costs carried almost entirely by taxes rather than family checkbooks.
Read the research →
Trump is selling a $54 billion South Korean LNG pledge as an Alaska midterm gift. Official GDP and payroll books show how large that check is next to the economy already there.
Read the research →
Caterpillar is putting about $1 billion into compact equipment in North Carolina, citing data-center construction demand. Official payrolls show the state’s construction workforce has surged while manufacturing has slipped, and the national construction-machinery shop remains a small industry still short of its 2008 peak.
Read the research →
U.S. consumer confidence just posted its weakest reading since 2014. Official books through 2024 show real income per person up more than 24% from that trough — and still a hair below the 2021 peak — while the IMF already scores 2026 American inflation as the highest in the G7.
Read the research →
Florida’s minimum wage hits $15 on Wednesday. Official average hourly earnings in leisure and hospitality were already $23.97 in July. The floor is late; the housing bill is not.
Read the research →
Trump is announcing a $15 billion Iowa mill and 1,750 jobs. Official payrolls show U.S. iron and steel mill employment already down by more than half since 1990, and Iowa’s existing primary-metal economy is a thin slice of the state’s GDP.
Read the research →
Mesabi Metallics is pitching the largest steel plant in U.S. history for southeast Iowa. Official payrolls and GDP show Iowa is already a factory state — just not a steel state — and that 1,750 permanent jobs would be a rounding error on the existing manufacturing payroll.
Read the research →
After a Washington summit that sold China 10 million tons of U.S. coal a year and a rollback of U.S. fuel-economy rules, IRENA’s electricity books show China already running much larger coal and solar fleets than America. U.S. coal capacity has been shrinking; U.S. solar overtook it in 2024. Generation still lags those nameplates, and U.S. gas remains the workhorse.
Read the research →
Voters will decide whether to keep a 9.9 percent tax on wage income above $1 million. Official books show a large, growing income base and almost no state income tax to match.
Read the research →
Trump is cutting 2031 fuel-economy targets, saying new cars will get cheaper. Official household books through 2024 already show Americans spending slightly more on motor fuel than on new vehicles, while dealer jobs dwarf the factory payroll the rule is supposed to help.
Read the research →
An ALICE report says more than a third of Minnesota households cannot afford basic needs. Official spending books through 2024 show how large food, housing, health care and fuel already are — and how little real income kept up.
Read the research →
Michigan sentiment sank and markets priced a pre-midterm Fed hike. Official real GDP through 2026 Q1 was still expanding, while an IMF vintage from August projected inflation well below what households told the survey.
Read the research →
Downtown hotel workers have voted to strike. Official payrolls show Chicago-area lodging is still about 13 percent smaller than in 2019, even as hospitality wages rose faster than the rest of the private sector.
Read the research →
A court just restored CNN, MS NOW and Politico to the White House. Official payrolls show how small America’s remaining newspaper, television-station and radio-station workforces already are — and how far they have fallen while software jobs inside the same information supersector multiplied.
Read the research →
The University of Minnesota is cutting $225 million over two years. Official job and spending books show public-campus employment a bit above 2019, still short of its 2013 peak, while private education jobs and household college bills moved differently.
Read the research →
Farm-state Republicans want a 90-day diesel export freeze because record fuel is said to be killing farm income. Official proprietors’ income and household fuel bills show a 2022 boom that already faded — and a gasoline tab that was already fatter in Iowa than in New York.
Read the research →
A 90-day Ohio gas-tax pause is being sold as emergency relief after Midwest diesel broke $6. Official household spending through 2024 shows Ohio was not unusually fuel-exposed, Iowa was, and Ohio freight payrolls had not collapsed.
Read the research →
The White House is cutting Affordable Care Act coverage for about 750,000 people and claiming $2.2 billion in savings. Official household accounts show a much larger, still-rising net health-insurance bill — and a shrinking carrier payroll.
Read the research →
California growers are dumping wine grapes. Official books show households still spending more on off-premises alcohol, a large farm sector, and beverage-plant jobs that have slipped from a 2023 peak.
Read the research →
IMF World Economic Outlook estimates still put the United States ahead in dollar GDP and far ahead in income per person, while China is larger on purchasing-power and takes a bigger slice of world output. The vintage is an August 2026 snapshot, not a live read of this week’s summit.
Read the research →
Official payrolls through July 2026 show Massachusetts still below its February 2020 peak, even as real GDP kept rising. Health care did almost all the hiring.
Read the research →
Official investment accounts now put computers ahead of homebuilding. Seasonally adjusted payrolls through mid-2026 show the opposite for the people who actually operate data centers.
Read the research →
West Virginia is a finalist for a federal nuclear campus. Official payrolls and GDP show mining still punches above its job count, factories have already shrunk, and utilities remain a thin slice of the state’s books.
Read the research →
Census middle-series projections put the next surge at ages 80, 85 and 90, not at 65. Official payrolls show skilled-nursing jobs still short of July 2019, while home-health work and household health and housing bills have climbed.
Read the research →
Official price parities and spending show Colorado housing well above the U.S. average. Real incomes rose too — just not as fast as the housing cheque.
Read the research →
Official consumer-spending books through 2024 show pharmaceutical products still smaller than hospitals or physician services, but growing faster than the rest of the basket — and they are not the same thing as the premiums voters name first.
Read the research →
State economists say Medicaid is driving a nearly $1.6 billion budget gap. Official consumption, GDP and payroll books show a large health economy — and a jobs boom — without proving that household health spending is eating everything else.
Read the research →
The House's Russia sanctions bill heads to President Trump with authority for 100% tariffs on buyers of Russian oil. The IMF's macro record shows what that weapon would target - and what it wouldn't.
Read the research →
Official payroll employment through July 2026 shows today's featured midterm battlegrounds splitting into two camps: Texas and North Carolina pulling away, four states shedding jobs, Oregon and Iowa still short of their pre-pandemic employment, and California losing ground inside 2026 despite a strong annual gain.
Read the research →
The Federal Reserve raised rates this week because demand will not cool. This article tests that claim against the Census Bureau's business-formation record: new-business applications are running at all-time highs in 2026 — 78% above 2019, above even the pandemic surge — across states red and blue. It also shows the catch: historically only a small and shrinking share of those applications ever became real businesses, and the measure that would confirm today's boom has yet to be published.
Read the research →
Census week crowned Louisiana the nation's poverty leader. New BEA income and price data show cheap living recovers only part of the gap — and explain why California looks worse than its paychecks suggest.
Read the research →
The Pentagon watchdog's first Iran-war report warns that replenishing munitions and aircraft will take significant lead time. The official payroll record shows why: every US aerospace and missile manufacturing segment is roughly a third smaller than at its 1990 peak, and the post-war hiring and overtime ramp so far is modest.
Read the research →
A check of the "Illinois wages grew 0% in 7 years" claim against official BLS payroll-earnings data: nominal wages rose 28.7%, the regional story is worse than the national one, and after inflation almost everyone's gain is small.
Read the research →
The EPA calls its power-plant repeal the largest power-sector deregulation in U.S. history, often framed around keeping coal alive. Official payrolls show roughly 39,000 coal-mining employees — shrinking faster than the rest of the energy sector and near the record low set in 2020.
Read the research →
New York is mailing up to $200 energy rebates to 8.2 million households. The official books show why the state needs them — and why the check is a gesture rather than a cure: New York households spent $14.8 billion on electricity in 2024, and the $1 billion rebate pool covers only about 6.8% of that annual bill.
Read the research →
A judge blocked Homeland Security from cutting FEMA roughly in half. Official CES payrolls show federal jobs already down about 327,000 since January 2025 — and FEMA’s court-record headcount is less than 1 percent of that federal total.
Read the research →
A Savoonga teenager survived a Bering Sea capsize. Official books show Alaska’s harvest income is mostly skippers, not paychecks, while the factory jobs still vanish every winter.
Read the research →
Gallup just posted a 27-year low in satisfaction with U.S. K-12 schools. Official payrolls show public-school jobs came back after 2020 and still sit a little above 2019, while private elementary jobs and household K-12 bills rose faster — and Florida never fully recovered.
Read the research →
A leaked Los Angeles analysis put a Paramount exit at 2,750 to 5,550 job-years. Official GDP and payrolls show California still producing about half of U.S. film-and-sound output — and already missing far more jobs than that range.
Read the research →
Before the Iran war sent U.S. diesel to a record, official consumer-spending books showed fuel oil as a rounding error nationally and a real line item in Vermont and Maine.
Read the research →
Hurricane Lowell cut power on Kauai and closed Lanai’s only cargo harbor. Official GDP and payrolls show how large Hawaii’s visitor economy already is — and how much of it was still missing after 2020.
Read the research →
A $5,000 adult-citizen check is a moderate slice of today’s average incomes, a larger slice in lower-income states, and a $1.2 trillion budget event — measured against BEA incomes and transfers, private wages, and IMF revenue.
Read the research →
Kentucky's motor-vehicle factories are already a $10.7 billion slice of the state. The new Louisville paint shop is a modernization bet, not a founding.
Read the research →
A new survey finds most insured Americans fear a major medical bill. Official consumer-spending books show household health consumption already tops $4 trillion, hospitals take the largest slice, and care has outrun groceries, gasoline and pay since 1997.
Read the research →
Iowa is borrowing federal money to restart Duane Arnold mainly for a Google data center. Official GDP, payrolls and household electricity bills show how large that bet is next to the utilities industry Iowa already has.
Read the research →
Official spending books show a country that records owner-occupied housing at three times tenant rent, while Austin, Denver and Portland already price housing well above the national average.
Read the research →
Florida’s latest citrus inventory shows another 21 percent of grove acres gone. Official farm GDP cannot isolate oranges, but it already shows a farm sector that has shrunk while the rest of Florida — and U.S. farms — grew.
Read the research →
August hiring blew past forecasts and traders priced a Fed hike. Official payrolls through July show a much thinner story: real hourly pay had already slipped after the Iran war began, and private education and health services had added more jobs than the entire net gain in the U.S. labor market.
Read the research →
Official payrolls show Atlantic City casino-hotel jobs at 19,600 in July 2026, down 60 percent from 1990, even as New Jersey households spent $7.6 billion on gambling in 2024.
Read the research →
Energy Secretary Chris Wright says a U.S. blockade will change Iran’s regime or its policies. IMF World Economic Outlook figures, pinned before this weekend’s tanker strikes, show an economy already a fraction of America’s, with inflation near 51 percent and a dollar GDP that peaked in 2011.
Read the research →
Oregon’s economist called the labor market “low-hire, low-fire,” with semiconductors at a 30-year low and health care cooling. Official payrolls through July 2026 show something sharper: 17 straight months below year-ago levels, a computer-and-electronics workforce back near 1990, and health-care jobs still rising even as the rest of the state shrinks.
Read the research →
Record U.S. diesel will land first on freight. Official payrolls show trucking jobs have been drifting down since 2022, were flat in the first five months of the Iran war, and still pay less per hour than the private-sector average.
Read the research →
Tyson is shutting a Utah beef plant and a larger one in Illinois after a 75-year low in cattle. Official state jobs and GDP show food manufacturing in those states and in packing peers still larger than a decade ago, even as 2026 monthly payrolls have slipped from recent peaks.
Read the research →
August’s jobs report said women accounted for almost every new payroll job. The official books through July already show a 50–50 workforce, health care doing the hiring, and factories and government shrinking.
Read the research →
Official payrolls show California recovered the pandemic trough, then stalled into a healthcare-only expansion that has lagged Texas, Florida and the United States.
Read the research →
After pandemic aid expired, hundreds of thousands of eligible children sat on childcare-assistance waitlists. Official payrolls show the U.S. childcare workforce had already recrossed its pre-pandemic size — and then stalled — while hourly pay still tracks restaurants, not nursing homes.
Read the research →
Official payrolls show Virginia lost about 48,000 jobs over the year to July 2026 even as real GDP was still a little higher than a year earlier. The split is already on the books: consulting and federal jobs fell, health care and local government kept hiring, and information output nearly doubled without an information payroll boom.
Read the research →
As July job openings ticked up and $4 gasoline returned with the Iran war, official payrolls, hours and temporary-help jobs show a market that stopped collapsing — and also stopped adding workers in any volume. Health care is carrying the net gain. Federal jobs are not.
Read the research →
Illinois hospitals say coming Medicaid payment caps could force staff cuts or closures. Official output, payroll and household-spending data show how large that industry already is — and how little slack it has.
Read the research →
Trump is huddling with refiners and pitching Venezuelan crude as a way to refill pumps. Official payrolls show petroleum refineries have shed more than two-fifths of their jobs since 1990, even as real refining output held up and gasoline-station employment grew.
Read the research →
Texas hospitals say extra Medicaid funding of $27 million a day is being withheld. Official transfer receipts show Texas already collects far less Medicaid money per person than other large states, and a $9.8 billion hole is a large slice of both that book and hospital value added.
Read the research →
The Pentagon wants to triple Patriot and quadruple THAAD output. Official payrolls show missile-plant jobs have risen since Russia invaded Ukraine, but they remain a third smaller than in 1990 and barely moved in the first months of the Iran war.
Read the research →
August’s Dallas Fed factory survey jumped. Official books through July still show Texas manufacturing jobs slightly down over the year — even as real factory output is far above 2019.
Read the research →
Washington sold a Venezuelan oil pact as energy insurance and a recovery for Caracas. Official GDP, industry, jobs and gasoline-spending books show a shrunken partner next to an American oil industry that already exists.
Read the research →
An 86-year-old Pennsylvania farmer turned down a reported data-center bid to keep 261 acres in crops. Official GDP shows why that bargain is so lopsided: farms are a rounding error on the state’s economy, real farm output has barely moved since 2000, and data processing is larger — but still tiny next to construction. West Virginia’s income-tax bet on hyperscale campuses is not yet visible in the accounts.
Read the research →
Trump called a Venezuelan oil pact the biggest deal in world history. Official GDP, payroll and state-industry accounts show how small the remaining Venezuelan economy is next to that promise — and how large America’s existing oil industry already is.
Read the research →
Lincoln Hospital will stop delivering babies by year’s end. Official spending, output and payrolls show Maine households already pay more than the typical American for hospital and health-care services — while the hospital industry itself has gotten smaller in real terms.
Read the research →
A $96 billion Nvidia quarter and a $4 billion Indiana HBM groundbreaking make it sound as if the United States is filling chip plants. Official factory payrolls say otherwise.
Read the research →
Statewide, Florida’s net household-insurance cost per resident is the highest in this comparison set — and still a rounding error next to the state income tax New York, New Jersey and California collect. Housing consumption is the larger offset.
Read the research →
The Army is paying for tiny nuclear machines so five bases can keep the lights on if the commercial grid fails, and the White House has declared a national emergency over foreign transformers. Official generation and payrolls show America’s nuclear fleet is huge, almost unchanged, and still smaller than gas — while the factories that make grid kit never got back to 1990.
Read the research →
SpaceX pledged $100 billion and more than 3,000 direct jobs for a Louisiana launch complex. Official GDP, income and payrolls show how large that bet is next to a Gulf Coast economy that has grown slowly, still runs on plants and pipelines, and already employs two million people.
Read the research →
Realtor.com’s “affordability refugees” are shopping outside their own metros. Official housing price parities show why the West’s old bargains no longer look cheap — and why Utah’s real incomes have not kept up.
Read the research →
SpaceX pitched a $100 billion Gulf Coast campus. Official GDP and job numbers show a slow-growing state whose oil jobs already halved — and 3,000 promised hires that would barely move Acadiana’s existing payroll.
Read the research →
Washington wants a six-figure surcharge on new H-1B petitions. Official payrolls show the computer-systems workforce already shrinking even as pay in those industries keeps rising — and the fee would equal most of a year of average wages.
Read the research →
Visit Florida reported a second straight quarterly drop in arrivals, led by Canadians. Official jobs and GDP show a still-large visitor economy that has slowed, not shrunk.
Read the research →
Official payrolls and state GDP show a U.S. auto-factory economy of about 965,000 jobs and $186 billion in output, concentrated in Michigan and the industrial Midwest and South — with parts plants already shrinking.
Read the research →
A Reno wildfire and a Las Vegas water lawsuit landed on the same Monday. Official payrolls and GDP show why southern Nevada’s argument is not just about farms: no other basin state still runs so much of its economy through hotels, casinos and restaurants.
Read the research →
Ottawa called the new 50% tariffs an attack. Official GDP, current-account, auto-output and factory-payroll series show how lopsided the two economies are — and that U.S. auto jobs have slipped only modestly while some Great Lakes payrolls have risen.
Read the research →
Iowa farmers told reporters this week that diesel, tariffs, and a stalled farm bill have them in a squeeze that could flip a Senate seat. Bureau of Economic Analysis farm proprietors’ income and farm GDP show a different sequence: a historic 2022 peak, a 2023–24 hangover that halved Iowa’s farm-proprietor dollars, and a partial rebound by early 2026 — with real farm output barely down.
Read the research →
Ottawa walked away over steel, aluminum, autos and lumber, then named dairy, appliances, farm equipment, paper and electronics for retaliation. Official U.S. payrolls show those industries still employ about 3.3 million people — and most of them have been getting smaller for a generation. Canada's economy is about one-thirteenth the size of America's.
Read the research →
Arizona, Nevada and California take the Colorado River cuts. Officials say household taps will keep running. Construction output, construction jobs and household water bills show how large the urban growth machine already is.
Read the research →
Official BEA accounts show SNAP transfers falling from a 2021 high well before 2026 enrollment reports, while grocery spending kept rising and some states still receive several hundred dollars per resident.
Read the research →
The Interior Department assigned the first two-year Colorado River cuts to Arizona, California and Nevada. Official farm output, farm income and population show those states hold most of the basin’s farm personal income — and Arizona already farms less than it did in 2000.
Read the research →
The U.S. federal debt crossed $40 trillion. IMF World Economic Outlook accounts show general-government debt already near 124 percent of GDP in 2025, a deficit still near 7 percent of GDP, and a wider ongoing gap than several more-indebted peers.
Read the research →
HelloFresh is closing a South Jersey warehouse into a year of more than 11,500 announced New Jersey job cuts. Official payrolls through July 2026 already show a modest statewide decline, concentrated more in manufacturing than in warehousing, while Illinois set a new high.
Read the research →
Treasury just crossed $40 trillion in gross federal debt. On the IMF’s comparable measure of general-government debt, the United States is already a high-debt, high-deficit economy — and the interest wedge in that budget is still widening.
Read the research →
LG Energy Solution has started production in Lansing. Official payrolls and real-output accounts show Michigan manufacturing still smaller than in 2019, while electrical-equipment GDP in the state has fallen even as Kentucky’s has risen.
Read the research →
July housing starts fell 12.4 percent as 30-year yields hit a 19-year high. Official job counts through the same month show residential building and residential specialty trades already shrinking, while nonresidential work, heavy civil construction and a still-rising total construction payroll keep the broader industry from looking like a bust.
Read the research →
Lawmakers in Sacramento are pushing balcony solar and virtual power plants after a decade of soaring electricity rates. Official spending and price data show California households really did see an unusually sharp jump — and still spend less per person than Texans, Floridians or Louisianans, because high prices and high kilowatt-hours are not the same map.
Read the research →
Tyson is closing beef plants as the U.S. cattle herd hits a 75-year low. Official payrolls through June 2026 show packing employment near a record, with the stall concentrated in animal-except-poultry slaughtering while poultry processing and food manufacturing kept adding jobs.
Read the research →
Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio are cutting staff and raising property taxes. Official payrolls show local-government jobs — cities, counties, and school districts — have lagged population and private hiring since 2010, while housing costs took a larger bite of Texans’ incomes.
Read the research →
Since January 2025, official U.S. payrolls have added jobs in construction and leisure while manufacturing and transportation have shrunk. Average hourly earnings in those industries have risen a little faster than the private-sector average; inflation-adjusted private pay is essentially flat.
Read the research →
A November wealth tax would land on a state that still produces about one-seventh of U.S. income and GDP. Population growth has lagged Texas and Florida, but real per capita incomes among remaining residents have risen faster than the national pace.
Read the research →
Saturday's $4.08 gasoline and still-rising grocery staples sit on a 2024 baseline in which Americans already spent about $4,350 a person on groceries and $1,295 on motor fuel. Shares of spending were not historically high; dollar bills were.
Read the research →
Texas is auditing hundreds of mostly data-center projects that claim more future power than the ERCOT grid has ever delivered. State GDP and payrolls show a real boom in data processing and hosting—and a much smaller jobs footprint than the politics imply.
Read the research →