Â鶹ÒùÔº

Anyone parsing through government statistics to get a better understanding of the U.S. economy knows how frustrating the process can be. Individual agencies collect data for different reasons across different periods of time and in ways that can be inconsistent with how other government bodies track information.

This matters a lot when trying to figure out, for example, what's happening in the American semiconductor chip industry following a 2022 federal law aimed at increasing its manufacturing capabilities in the name of national security. Questions around how many American jobs have been created, the extent to which more chips are being produced, and how the increased capacity is affecting foreign trade are crucial to understanding whether the investments are paying off.

Now, thanks to a team of researchers at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, there's a much easier way to get these and other granular insights into the state of the U.S. economy: The Industry Data Navigator ().

The free, publicly available tool pulls together government reports on a range of key economic indicators, among them rates of employment, manufacturing, foreign trade, capital investments, and the prices that producers pay to make goods. The IDN lets users pick and choose current and historical government data on 20 U.S. business sectors and break them down into subsectors, industry groups, and industries. Once users select their criteria, the tool then displays the results in .

The goal is to give policymakers, journalists, investors, and researchers the ability to easily track relationships—and spot patterns—across the production lifecycle from investment to employment to output at different levels of granularity, says Neale Mahoney, the Trione Director at SIEPR and a professor of economics at Stanford.

"Gathering and then analyzing government data to gain a clearer picture of the U.S. economy and its various components can be a maddening process," says Mahoney. "But with the Data Navigator, anyone can see what's happening in the U.S. economy across a range of industries– from potato farming to natural gas extraction to clothing manufacturing—and over time."

For policymakers grappling with rapidly evolving economic challenges like rising tariffs or the adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace, the IDN can provide critical information that isn't always easily accessible. And for journalists, the tool can help inform their economics coverage while providing them with reader-friendly charts that they are free to embed in their newspaper stories, blog posts, or videos.

"The beauty of the Data Navigator is that it eliminates the need for advanced programming skills or specialized statistical software to analyze government data," Mahoney says.

A reporter covering semiconductors, for example, can use the tool's drop-down menus to instantly see changes over time in American chip and other electronic component manufacturing, hiring, producer pricing, and exporting and importing.

Researchers, too, can benefit by using the tool to build more complex charts or downloading the underlying data to conduct more sophisticated economic modeling.

Mahoney says the tool is the latest example of how SIEPR helps inform policy discussions at all levels of government through research and practical applications developed in-house and in partnership with government agencies or other academic institutions.

"These are extraordinary times for the U.S. economy," Mahoney says. "The Data Navigator helps make sense of what's going on even at the most granular levels."