Economic Development Organizations (EDOs) are facing a paradox. While spending millions of dollars on global lead generation — flying to trade shows, running digital campaigns, and nurturing corporate leads for years — many are missing the companies that are already operating in their own backyards.

These aren’t stealth startups or shell entities. They are real companies, often global, fast-growing, and hiring locally, but they remain invisible in the databases and dashboards of the very institutions designed to support them. The reason is deceptively simple: they’ve hired people, not built offices.

The Rise of the Hidden Employer

Remote work and the rise of Employer of Record (EOR) services have fundamentally changed how global firms expand. A company in Boston can now hire developers in Berlin, a customer success manager in Lisbon, or a designer in Austin, all without setting up a local legal entity.

When companies use EORs, the legal employer on record is the EOR’s local entity, not the company itself. The arrangement keeps everything compliant – taxes, benefits, social security – but it means the real employer’s name is missing from local registries. The employees are there, but to local governments, they appear to work for “GlobalPay Solutions GmbH” or “RemoteWork Ltd.” rather than the brand whose product they build every day.

As ADP’s compliance blog explains, U.S. state labor departments “may not automatically know that an employee is working in their state” unless a claim or inquiry forces it into view. The same problem exists in Europe: tax records show the EOR, not the actual employer. The outcome is a vast gray zone of legitimate jobs that remain statistically and institutionally invisible.

Traditional Lead Generation Is Still the Default

Faced with this new complexity, many EDOs have stuck to what they know. Traditional lead generation remains the mainstay of investment promotion — long prospect lists, global outreach campaigns, years of nurturing potential investors.

According to Wavteq, a consultancy specializing in foreign direct investment (FDI), it can take two to five years of sustained engagement for an EDO to convert a corporate lead into a new project. That timeline made sense in a world of large industrial projects, but it’s out of step with today’s distributed and fast-moving economy.

What’s often overlooked is that EDOs are surrounded by potential success stories waiting to be discovered. When a company hires someone in a region, even through an EOR or remote setup, it’s a sign of market interest and “dipping a toe in the water”. These firms have already chosen to invest in local talent. They’re warm leads, not cold ones. Yet few EDOs have mechanisms to notice or engage them.

Why the Blind Spot Exists

Part of the problem lies in outdated assumptions about what economic activity looks like. A 2023 peer-reviewed study in Local Economy by researcher S. T. Soroui found that many EDO professionals still operate with “institutionalized mental models” built around traditional industry structures such as factories, offices, and physical investments. Remote-first or EOR-based hiring doesn’t fit that pattern, so it’s often ignored.

Governments and EDOs are, in effect, using 20th-century tools to understand a 21st-century workforce. The signals that once indicated business presence – such as a building permit, a tax ID, a Chamber of Commerce registration – no longer tell the full story.

Meanwhile, the EOR sector has exploded. According to Deel’s 2025 academic collaboration with Professor Samuel Dahan, EOR models now serve as “credible and compliant structures for global hiring,” particularly for SMEs expanding abroad. This flexibility supports job creation, but it also means that local authorities often don’t realize when those jobs appear in their jurisdiction.

A German software company might employ a dozen people in the U.S. via an EOR. To U.S. records, those employees belong to the EOR provider, not the software company. Unless the company voluntarily establishes an entity or engages with an EDO, its footprint remains invisible.

“Once we’ve identified where our employees are based, our focus shifts to setup and commercial traction,” said one Upsite customer, a UK-based Cyber Security company expanding in the U.S. “At that stage, we typically don’t engage with local governments unless we already have an established relationship.”

What makes this blind spot even more significant is the type of companies that tend to use EOR models. Many of them are high-growth, knowledge-driven firms in sectors like software, artificial intelligence, biotech, and advanced services. These companies are already shaping the future economy, often growing faster and creating higher-value jobs than traditional industries. If EDOs fail to recognize their presence, they risk missing out on some of the most transformative employers of the next decade — the very ones redefining competitiveness, innovation, and talent attraction at the regional level.

Rethinking Economic Development: From Global Hunting to Local Discovery

This isn’t an argument against global business attraction, far from it. But it is an argument for balance. Instead of dedicating 100% of their time to identifying distant targets, EDOs should start by mapping who’s already there.

The truth is, many of the jobs EDOs are chasing abroad already exist in some form within their territory. They’re simply less visible — distributed across remote teams, handled through third-party arrangements, or unfolding quietly without a formal office or public announcement.

Recognizing these opportunities requires a shift in perspective. Instead of focusing solely on large-scale investments or ribbon-cutting ceremonies, EDOs can begin to notice smaller indicators of activity — subtle patterns in hiring behavior, emerging clusters of professionals tied to the same company, or recurring references to a region in business communications and digital footprints. These faint signals, when observed in context, can point to where companies are already active and where deeper partnerships might take root.

These fragments of information, when connected, tell a powerful story about a region’s true corporate landscape.

The Power of Weak Signals

Soroui’s Local Economy study highlights that the ability to “detect and interpret weak signals,” or faint indicators of emerging trends, is what separates adaptive EDOs from reactive ones. In the context of workforce data, those signals can illuminate the hidden economy operating in plain sight.

Imagine if an EDO could see that twenty employees in their city work for a biotech firm headquartered in another state. That’s a natural lead: the company already believes in the local talent base. If approached, it might be open to expanding its presence, joining local initiatives, or partnering with universities.

This is where technology platforms like Upsite are stepping in, helping EDOs connect the dots between where people live and where the companies they work for are based. By analyzing hiring data, employee networks, and corporate footprints, EDOs can identify those under-the-radar employers and start building relationships early.

From Invisible to Invested

Once those signals are captured, engagement becomes easier. The outreach is warmer, the context richer, and the dialogue more meaningful. Instead of starting with a cold pitch such as “Would you consider expanding here?”, an EDO can start with:

“We’ve noticed you already employ several people in our region. We’d love to explore how we can support you and your team.”

That small shift changes the dynamic. It signals awareness, partnership, and mutual benefit. It’s not about selling the region, it’s about amplifying what’s already working.

After all, roughly 80% of new jobs come from existing employers, not relocations or new entrants (Portland Tribune, Economic Summit coverage, 2021).

The lesson is clear: the future of economic development isn’t just about chasing new arrivals. It’s about seeing, supporting, and strengthening the ones who are already here.

Seeing the Unseen: How Upsite Helps

At Upsite, we believe that economic developers shouldn’t have to guess which companies are already investing in their communities. By surfacing the weak signals, from distributed employee footprints to hiring trends, Upsite helps EDOs and governments uncover hidden employers, strengthen local engagement, and turn invisible jobs into visible impact.

Because economic development doesn’t start with who’s coming next, but with who’s already here.