What this is
Type where you live. We take that spot, find its place on the map, and ask a dozen public records at once: what do rents take, are jobs holding, what does power cost, is there a bank nearby. Then we do the one thing that matters — read each local number against the national one.
A town at low unemployment looks fine. The same town, where rent eats half of local pay and a third of income is government checks, is a fragile place wearing a healthy mask. The gap between how the economy looks and how it feels here is the whole point.
How to read it
- Every number is a share or a rate with a clear denominator — never a bare total dressed up as insight.
- Every panel shows its age. Some records lag a year or more. We say so instead of pretending it's live.
- Estimates are labeled estimates. If a number is modeled instead of measured, it carries a tag.
- It's not a ranking. No place is graded good or bad. We're just showing where the official story hides real strain.