How this is made

• Every figure carries its source. Census, GSA per diem tables, wage determinations, permit filings — linked, so you can check it.
• Numbers that move are marked reported, estimated or unverified. A press release is not a permit filing, and it never gets shown as one.
• Housing and the commute come from phone calls. To the parks, the halls, the project offices, by name. It can’t be looked up, and it’s the part that costs you money when it’s wrong.
• Nobody pays to be listed. Not a park, not a hall, not a landlord, not a contractor.
• The calculator keeps nothing. No account, no log of what you type.

Reported — a named workforce figure from the owner, the contractor, a regulatory filing or credible local reporting, linked in the row. Trust it to the date given.

Estimated — no published craft count. Inferred from project scale, scope and comparable jobs. Directionally useful, not quotable.

Unverified — a number from a secondary source with no primary behind it. Treat it as a lead, not a fact.

Not published — the operator doesn’t release a craft count and isn’t going to. Hyperscale data centers are built under non-disclosure, so the biggest jobs on the list are often the ones with no number attached. These rows sort to the top, not the bottom. Ranking them low would say “small,” which is the one thing we know is wrong. Their circle is a dashed outline at a fixed size, because any filled circle would state a scale nobody has published. What the construction filings say — square footage, dollars, start and finish dates — goes in the row instead, because that is public record whether or not anyone puts out a press release.

What’s deliberately missing. Percent complete and expected completion dates. They go stale within weeks, and a stale progress number on a page read by people standing on the job costs more than it buys.

Known gaps. Transmission and grid projects aren’t covered yet, and neither is heavy civil. Both employ traveling craft at scale and both belong in the next pass.

The calculator runs in your browser. The rate you type, the per diem, the hours, the miles — none of it is sent to us. It’s saved on your phone so it’s there next time, and “Clear my numbers” wipes it. There is no account. If you send a result to someone, the numbers travel inside the link itself, to that person only.

If you leave an email address, it’s stored so the site guides can be sent to you. You’ll get each new guide when it’s done, and a note when a new tool goes up. Nothing else, and you can leave the list from any message.