BLS CPI / monthly
All-items CPI
12-month percent change3.4%2026-07
U.S. economic accounts and public systems
National Economic Context Observatory
Prices, employment, productivity, business formation, and merger review provide context for competition research. Their units and release periods remain separate; no composite score is calculated.
- Systems
- 7
- 7 separate source contracts
- Signals
- 14
- two choices per system
- Coverage
- 2017-2026
- 10 calendar years
- Encoded
- 872
- 846 usable readings
- Prices
- 3.4%
- All-items CPI / 2026-07
- Labor flows
- 4.4%
- Job openings / 2026-06
- Employment
- $37.62
- Hourly earnings / 2026-07
- Productivity
- 120.0
- Labor productivity / 2026-Q2
- Labor share
- 93.5
- Labor share / 2026-Q2
- Dynamism
- 10.6%
- Establishment entry / 2023
- Mergers
- 2,006
- HSR transactions / FY2025
Comparison passport
One signal per evidence system
United States / exact native periods / independent scales- Evidence systems
- 7
- one selected signal each
- Encoded readings
- 436
- 423 usable values
- Explicit edges
- 13
- source or calculation gaps
- Release states
- 7
- preliminary or revised readings
BLS JOLTS / monthly
Job openings
percent of employment plus openings4.4%2026-06
BLS CES / monthly
Hourly earnings
current dollars per hour$37.622026-07
BLS PRS / quarterly
Labor productivity
index, 2017=100120.02026-Q2
BLS via FRED / quarterly
Labor share
index, 2017=10093.52026-Q2
Census BDS / annual
Establishment entry
percent of establishments10.6%2023
FTC / DOJ HSR / fiscal year
HSR transactions
reported transactions2,006FY2025
Source custody
Seven releases, seven interpretation boundaries
Consumer prices
Broad and housing-related consumer-price movement from the CPI, retained as descriptive price context.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics / reviewed 2026-08-13Labor-market flows
Openings and voluntary separations from JOLTS, kept separate from employer-power and local-market inference.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics / reviewed 2026-08-13Employment and earnings
Private payroll jobs and nominal hourly earnings from the establishment survey, in their published source units.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics / reviewed 2026-08-13Productivity and labor costs
Nonfarm business output per hour and labor cost per unit of output from the major-sector production accounts.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics / reviewed 2026-08-13Labor share and compensation
Labor compensation relative to output beside real hourly compensation, retained as separate indexed accounting concepts.
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis / reviewed 2026-08-13Business dynamism
National establishment and job-flow rates from Census BDS, with annual observations through the latest published year.
U.S. Census Bureau / reviewed 2026-07-19Merger-review pipeline
Federal premerger filing volume and intensive-review incidence by fiscal year, without outcome or effectiveness scoring.
Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice / reviewed 2026-07-18Research continuation
Context changes the question, not the answer
Prices and market structure
Market dossiers Which product and geographic market would make a price movement competitively interpretable?
Labor flows and employer power
Research agenda Which occupation, commuting zone, institutions, and outside options define the relevant worker choice set?
Productivity and distribution
Labor-share desk What evidence can separate composition, technology, bargaining, and competitive mechanisms?
Merger review and economic conditions
Merger observatory Filing volume and review intensity describe the pipeline, not merger effects or agency performance.
Reusable evidence