"In the late 1980s James Stock and Mark Watson developed for the U.S. economy an alternative coincident index to the one now published by the Conference Board. They used the Kalman filter to estimate a latent dynamic factor for the national economy and designated the common factor as the...

Economic development often founders on a mismatch between available workforce skills and companies’ needs. A tool that analyzes critical sets of labor market data not previously considered in tandem can help local governments improve planning.