22 Things Economic Developers Need to Know This Week
The stories Dane thinks you need to see. March 18, 2026 edition.
Welcome to this week's issue of What Economic Developers Need to Know This Week, where we collect links, charts, and ideas about the economy and place.
This week: 22 stories, graphics, and rabbit holes that are mostly relevant to economic development.
If you are wondering what to do with the info in this newsletter: send one item to a board member who still thinks "economic development" just means incentives.
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1) Economic Development and Developers in the News # 235: Econ dev news from 40 economic development executives and organizations in 24 states.
2) Podcast 212: How Incentives Really Influence Site Selection with Taylor Stepp: Incentive packages: less copy-paste, more strategy
3) 43 New Economic Development Jobs This Week + Hiring Trends: In 19 states from $37,000 - $250,000
4) Economic Development and Developers in the News # 234: Econ dev news from 155 economic development executives and organizations in 35 states.
5) Nathan Ohle, President and CEO of IEDC: Economic development job now includes housing, childcare, infrastructure, talent, and cross-sector choreography whether the org chart admits it or not. Read: Economic Developer Role Shifting from Deal-Making to Systems Stewardship.
6) Kevin Crowder: Economic development is still presenting to itself while the real growth conversations are happening in creator, culture, and IP rooms. That's an uncomfortable idea, which is why it is probably worth reading. Read: Economic Developers are in the Wrong Rooms..
7) A benchmarking framework for regional competitiveness: A lot of local strategy decks need fewer mascot rankings and more apples-to-apples peer comparisons. This is basically a pitch for that. Explore: Economic Competitiveness Index.
8) Main Street is starting to market itself against private equity: That matters. "Locally owned" is turning from sentimental copy into a competitive position. Read: Private Equity Firms Want to Acquire Small Businesses But Owners Say No.
9) Distribution is infrastructure too: MJ Jaindl's post is nominally about LinkedIn, but the real lesson is that publishing without a commenting and follow-up system is just hoping. A lot of econ dev marketing still runs on hope. Read: Content alone won't grow your LinkedIn.
10) Inflation by state:
11) Two-thirds of datacenter power requests vanish when utilities ask for money: The line is not the load. If interconnection demand collapses the second utilities require deposits and long-term contracts, a lot of the queue was just hyperscalers rationally saving their place in line. Read: Two-thirds of datacenter power requests 'vanish' the moment utilities ask for money.
12) Workers still have to sleep somewhere: The AI data center boom is also becoming a temporary-housing story. Remote megaprojects create labor demand long before they create much of a place. Read: The $700 Billion AI Data Center Boom Is Fueling a Boom in Man-Camp Housing.
13) Manufacturing output is up even when payrolls are not: Flat jobs plus rising output means productivity growth. That is good news for competitiveness and awkward news for anyone still using headcount as the whole story. Read: Gad Levanon on LinkedIn.
14) A genuinely useful labor-market toy: Karpathy's job visualizer turns 342 occupations and 143 million jobs into something you can actually explore. More workforce dashboards should feel like this. Explore: US Job Market Visualizer.
15) National labor-market headlines are too coarse for local work: The U.S. rate was 4.3%, but this county map is the real briefing. The difference between "fine" and "not fine" is still wildly geographic.
16) Cost-of-living-adjusted income changes the brag sheet: The usual rich-city list looks different once you adjust for local costs. That matters if your pitch deck still confuses expensive with prosperous.
17) Where people moved is not the same as where people say they are happiest: WalletHub's happy-city map and this state migration map are a nice reminder that affordability, aspiration, identity, and weather are all still sorting people in different ways. See: Peter Mallouk on LinkedIn.
18) Amenity economies keep inventing new housing pressure: This short-term-rental map is a tourism story, an investor story, and a local-housing story all at once. Mountain towns know this already.
19) Demographic momentum is not evenly distributed: This fertility map is older, from 2017, but the directional point still holds. Some states are replacing themselves, most are not, and that eventually shows up everywhere else.
20) Ecology is economic development, even when we forget to count it: John Slaughter's biodiversity post, the lament for the American chestnut and Carolina parakeet, and this tree-cover map all point at the same thing: natural assets are real assets, even if they do not fit neatly into a utility-rate spreadsheet. See: John Slaughter on X and TheThiccyBlicky on X.
21) Roger Penske found a cheat code in a stadium district: This is a motorsports story, but it is also an economic development story about reusing existing infrastructure, stacking entertainment assets, and borrowing someone else's audience instead of building one from scratch. Read: Roger Penske Found a Cheat Code Sitting in Jerry Jones' Parking Lot.
22) Why Certainty Beats Incentives in Economic Development: In this clip, Michael Looney and Mike Berry from the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce and the City of San Angelo Development Corporation explain why certainty, simplicity, and speed outperform incentive dollars in almost every project.
