43 Things Economic Developers Need to Know This Week
The stories Dane thinks you need to see. June 5, 2025 edition.
Welcome to this week's issue of What Economic Developers Need to Know This Week, where we explore the evolving dynamics of our economy.
This week we have 43 tools, stories, graphics, charts and videos that I think you'll find informative, useful, inspiring, and perhaps even humorous. Some are economic development related directly, and some only indirectly. 🤔
If you're wondering what to do with the info in this newsletter, send something to your board members. It will make you look good!
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1) Economic Development and Developers in the News # 198 - Econ dev news from 90 economic development executives and organizations in 20 states.
2) Podcast 176 - From Rust Belt to Tech Hub: Buffalo's 25-Year Transformation with Tom Kucharski - Making Buffalo cool again (no pun intended)
3) 32 New Econ Dev Jobs This Week - In 20 states, from $35 - $216,000
4) 🚀 A Year In: Sitehunt Is Stronger Than Ever Listening to users has helped us turn a smart tool into a must-have platform for economic developers.
5) Tradeshow season is coming up fast. Here's an 11-step playbook to crush it at conferences.
6) U.S. counties with the highest and lowest rates of excessive drinking:
7) Sometimes it really is just this easy: A San Francisco Plaza Was Down and Out. Then Skaters Moved In.
8) US states with the most car crashes:
9) From CBRE: Tariffs, labor and power are top three themes at the forefront of economic development discussions
10) Why cities fail when they plan top-down and hope bottom-up.
With Sitehunt, know which site wins: instantly.
Sitehunt’s Site Scoring feature automatically ranks your properties based on how well they match an RFI’s requirements.
When an RFI comes in, Sitehunt checks each site against the criteria and gives it a score. Higher score = better fit.
No more guesswork. No more bias. Just fast, fair, data-backed rankings that help you pick the right site—faster.
11) McKinsey: How to address US labor shortages.
12) L.A. sound stages: Are they the new dead mall?
13) More and more, CEOs are starting their careers at consulting forms. Why?
14) Jim Gibson is exploring how local political culture shapes economic development.
One quote that stood out to me: "A recent study by Cerqua & Pellegrini found that regional political trust is a robust predictor of economic performance."
15) A unintended side effect of the trade war: China won't export rare-earth magnets, but they will allow the export of finished parts made with rare earth magnets. So obviously, American automakers are contemplating building more factories in China.
16) The 2024 Q4 County Employment and Wages Summary is out: From December 2023 to December 2024, employment increased in 256 of the 369 largest U.S. counties, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. In December 2024, national employment increased to 156.2 million, a 0.8-percent increase over the year, as measured by the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program.
17) Last month: US hiring decelerated to its slowest pace in two years as sectors including business services, education and health shed jobs. Private-sector payrolls increased by only 37,000 last month, according to ADP Research, lower than all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists. That marked the second month in a row when the figures from ADP were well below expectations.
18) California, New York and Texas have the greatest shares of the roughly 1.1 million international college students in the U.S.
19) On the origin of pervasive zoning: A century ago, in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., the Supreme Court effectively ruled that apartments could be treated as a nuisance.
Cities across the country got to the business of denoting the very limited sections of their jurisdictions where apartments, hog rendering plants, and sewage treatment facilities could be located, and reserved the remaining 80% or so of the land for single-family homes.
20) Social Security retirement claims are on track to rise 15% this year from 2024, per an analysis by the Urban Institute, a research group.
From 2012 to 2024, claims increased by 3% per year, on average.
2024 marked the start of the Peak 65 Zone, the largest surge of Americans turning 65 in U.S. history.
21) Young people are skeptical of the American Dream:
Take this as an example: I'm the most pro-future guy you'll probably ever meet, and my 22-year-old thinks it's the end of the world.
Of course when I was that age, I'd was still wearing flannel in the summer, listening to Nirvana, and thinking deep conversations at 2 a.m. in the 7-11 parking lot could change the world.
22) In a unanimous decision, the US Supreme Court rejected the DC Circuit's broad interpretation of agency responsibilities under the National Environmental Policy Act. The case centered on whether federal agencies must evaluate third-party environmental impacts, like oil drilling and refining, when approving infrastructure projects.
Writing for the majority, Justice Kavanaugh clarified that NEPA requires agencies to assess only the direct effects of the project in question, not speculative downstream or upstream impacts. The ruling is a win for infrastructure developers, easing NEPA burdens and potentially streamlining approvals
23) Last month's pending home sales hovered near the lows seen during the COVID lockdowns:
24) According to data compiled by Redfin, the gap between home sellers and buyers in the US housing market hit a record 33.7% in April, with nearly 500,000 more sellers than buyers. With inventory piling up and buyer demand softening, market dynamics have shifted decisively in favor of buyers:
