January 14, 2026
Economic development has traditionally been measured by investment announcements, business registrations, and press releases. Those signals still matter, but they increasingly lag behind reality, or miss it altogether. In today’s economy, the most reliable indicator of real growth is simpler and faster: jobs.
Hiring reflects action. Companies don’t add people unless demand is real and growth is expected. As a result, workforce activity often reveals emerging economic momentum well before a ribbon cutting or corporate filing ever appears.
Conventional indicators suffer from three growing weaknesses.
First, they are slow. Job announcements may take years to materialize, if they materialize at all. Hiring activity, by contrast, shows growth as it happens.
Second, many are misleading. Business registrations have surged in recent years, but most new entities never hire. A region can report thousands of new LLCs with little economic impact. Jobs represent real wages, productivity, and demand.
Third, expansion has become invisible. Remote work and Employer of Record models allow companies to grow in a region without offices, permits, or local registrations. In many cases, jobs are the only signal that a company is economically present at all.
Together, these trends make traditional metrics incomplete. Hiring fills the gap.
Together, these signals cut through speculation. If people are being hired and paid, something real is happening.
Job data also exposes opportunities that traditional approaches miss. When a company quietly hires a handful of employees in a region — especially remotely — it’s already probing that market. These hires reflect confidence in local talent and represent a warm lead for economic developers to get in touch and convince the company of the benefits of expanding their small initial presence.
Most job growth comes from companies expanding existing headcounts, not from high-profile relocations. The next major employer in your region is far more likely to start with five quiet hires than with a press press release and ribbon-cutting. Job signals surface these moments early, when engagement can still shape the outcome.
Instead of cold outreach based on industry lists, EDOs can approach companies already growing locally with a simple message: we see you’re hiring here — how can we help?
Tracking hiring at scale requires better tools. Platforms like Foresight analyze job postings, distributed workforces, and company growth patterns to surface under-the-radar expansion in real time. Rather than raw data, they provide context: who is hiring, for what roles, how fast, and why it matters.
This allows EDOs to move earlier than competitors—engaging companies before formal expansion decisions are finalized and before traditional signals appear.
In the modern economy, jobs are the leading indicator rather than a lagging one. They are often the first sign of a capital, innovation-driven, and long-term commitment.
Regions that succeed will be those that learn to spot opportunity in hiring data and act on it quickly. By putting jobs first — before announcements, filings, and headlines — economic developers can engage with companies earlier, influence growth trajectories, and win more meaningful investments for their regions.
Follow the jobs. They tell the story first.
