Big surprise: New York is the only US city where most households don't have cars. But there are some big zero-car minorities across the river in New Jersey and in Washington, Boston and San Francisco. From new column with gift link: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

one way to understand the LLM boom is that we have finally, actually, invented Ask Jeeves.

Lots of transit news from BART director Victor Flores - including that the BART board has voted to use standard gauge for the 2nd set of transbay tubes. This will open up the option for Caltrain, High Speed Rail, and Amtrak to cross between downtown San Francisco and the East Bay in the future.

I noticed! www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

New York's Gun Involved Violence Elimination initiative (GIVE) has data updated through August. Shooting victims were down 34% relative to August 2024 and fell to a new 12 month rolling record low since 2007. See their excellent dashboard: www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/crimnet/ojsa...

A month into the DC deployment we see no real change in the violent crime trend, a possible drop in shootings that seems real but is a bit tough to tease out from the pre-existing trend, and a drop in property crime that's possibly tied to dropping mobility. Still too early to say much for sure IMO.

New Census data on working from home is out this week, and Santa Monica is No. 1! This is ranked by Public Use Microdata Data — I explain why in my new column (gift link) — but it also tops the list if you rank by cities. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Got that wrong

I think the preliminary benchmark payroll revisions coming out in a few minutes are going to be on the low end of all the estimates. Looking at the Q4 2024 QCEW data (the revision will be based on Q1 2025 data) I just don't see the kinds of huge discrepancies there were in Q4 2023.

New this week: Chicago likely has had fewer shootings through August year than any year since the mid-1960s. Gun violence remains a problem there, but I wrote about the city's encouraging trends and the data challenge of historically contextualizing this year. jasher.substack.com/p/contextual...

How reliable are crime statistics? @byjustinfox.bsky.social explains why he still trusts the data, even with its flaws 🎥

The Real-Time Crime Index has just been updated with numbers from nearly 150 more law-enforcement agencies and now it shows both violent crime and murder to be lower as of this June than in 2018-2019 realtimecrimeindex.com

Excellent primer on crime statistics from @byjustinfox.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

@agordon.me gets action!

Some super-exciting (and mostly imaginary) things going on with the BLS native- and foreign-born population estimates www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

- If you ride NJ Transit and haven’t read @agordon.me’s story, you should! - If you live in a state that refuses to fund its transit systems because ‘ey what could happen’, send this bad boy to your state lawmakers *cough PAers cough*

What’s at stake in the unexpected US-China fight over the Panama Canal? @jpspinetto.bsky.social traveled to the crucial waterway to find out 🎥 Read the feature: bit.ly/4mGDoCv

OK I have finished part 1 (less technical) of an epic #rstats and #demography blog post on men doing domestic work and its relationship to total fertility rate at the country level. Ultimately there is none, once you control for GDP per capita and inequality. freerangestats.info/blog/2025/08...

Watch out after midnight, America. From new column on the FBI's increasingly detailed crime statistics. Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

2024 NYC homicide rate (using CDC data): 4.4 deaths per 100K population 2024 homicide rate in Troy Downing's district (I counted all of Pondera County as in the district; hope that's OK): 6.3 deaths per 100K population

My subway-safety charts, now on video

Good piece from @amandamull.bsky.social that helps me better understood the cultural world my soon-to-be-tween daughter is interacting with.

Violent crime is down in DC but it still has one of the highest murder rates among big US cities

Great thoughts from @byjustinfox.bsky.social on what's behind the Great American Murder Decline www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Good times

"To the best of my knowledge, I did not pass away last November 20. That is not just my opinion. In recent months I have been examined by two different licensed physicians, and if I had been dead, I'm pretty sure at least one of them would have mentioned it." davebarry.substack.com/p/death-by-ai

I am so thrilled my daughter will by going to college in NYC, in large part because she will not be doing the single most dangerous thing a young person can do (drive), and will instead be getting around on one of the safest means of transportation ever devised (the subway).

The subway risk chart you've been waiting for (Sawyer County, Wisconsin, is where Sean Duffy is from). Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Major crimes on the subway are down but that's mainly because the most common major crime, grand larceny, is down. Felony assaults are in fact up ~60% relative to 2019 — up 127% if you adjust for ridership. Annual data here: www.mta.info/document/163... YTD data here: www.mta.info/document/176...

They shoulda listened to Clement Clarke Moore (in 1818) babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nn...

Employment in "mobile food services" including food trucks & food carts grew ~10x from 2000 to 2024 to ~44,000 as of 2024. Source: The Economics Daily from the BLS, www.bls.gov/opub/ted/202...

Pretty remarkable increase over the past decade in the issuance of H-2A visas for seasonal agricultural workers. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

For those interested in construction union politics in California — and you should be if you want to understand why major housing legislation passes or fails — this @calmatters.org story is really helpful calmatters.org/politics/202...

Some crazy stuff going on lately with the employment-population ratio for young Black Americans, which could be real or could be something off with the data (or both!) www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

The single-graph response to JD Vance

ADP showed job losses in June & is cooling faster than payrolls reflecting "a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers [leading] to job losses" A big disconnect in priv ed & health care is significant as it accounts for nearly 2/3 of all payrolls over the past 3m

Baltimore ended the first half of 2022 with 179 homicides, the worst first half of a year on record (since 1970). Baltimore just ended the first half of 2025 with 68 homicides, which is the fewest on record. That’s a 62 percent drop from 2022-2025

The Bay Area is back, baby sfstandard.com/2025/06/16/a...

The rise of the one-bedroom apartment. From today's column, with gift link: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

It's not just the US murder rate that is likely at or near the lowest level ever recorded. The data from the first 4 months of 2025 points to the possibility of the lowest reported property crime rate ever & lowest violent crime rate in decades. This week's piece: jasher.substack.com/p/its-not-ju...

So this is a bit deceptive because Tax Credits don't count as "spending" ... climate-related parts of the IRA would be one of the top 10 categories, the ARPA CTC isn't in "income security", etc. But the big categories are always health + Social Security www.gao.gov/products/gao...

Real federal spending increases since just before the pandemic, by Budget Enforcement Act category www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

A powerful read from @franciswilkinson.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/opinion/feat...

With GDP and GDI (gross domestic income) numbers now available for the first quarter, I made another one of my charts of presidents and economic growth www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Where federal spending is up and where it's down www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

And Cuomo went through a red light as he turned onto 7th Avenue (!!) h/t to @katiehonan.bsky.social who caught the moment:

New York's experience with violent crime since the start of the pandemic has been exceptional www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

I always struggle to make sense of those 10-year numbers on something like the GOP budget bill. Here's the impact on overall receipts and outlays in a chart www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...