Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays
It's a remarkably bad measure. Consistency only takes you so far.
Anecdotally, they also seem to miss a lot. This isn't surprising since every widespread info-gathering method is hugely flawed...reporting by the companies (who often try hard to keep things quiet), various states' tax records which might or might not have this info, permits which might only cover ancillary work (like the foundation but not the tool), and so on.
I'd LOVE to find useful annual tallies of the various kinds of work by state in the sectors my company works in (manufacturing, office, multifamily, retail, hotel, education, and so on), but they...simply...don't...exist. Only halfassed attempts exist.
|
Not sure I follow your critique. They set a pretty low bar for a project to qualify (new construction plus 20+ news employees or 20k+ more sq ft or $1m+ in construction). I'm sure they do miss many projects, but for the purposes of a *ranking* that doesn't matter so long as they're missing projects in a manner that doesn't vary by city.
I'm not suggesting this data be used for much more than a ranking or a general sense of where expansions/relocations are occurring. But I don't think its imperfections render it useless, either. I originally looked into this data for my research and, while it doesn't really serve the purposes of my own research agenda, I think it's an interesting measure that isn't easily proxied by any other readily available data.
But I can understand your pain. In my case I don't need the full universe of projects - just an unbiased sample. But in your case if you're looking for leads or something then you would ideally like as close to a universal sample as possible.
Threaded Mode