Ed Z
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edzarenski.bsky.social
Ed Z
@edzarenski.bsky.social
1K followers 360 following 640 posts
Construction Economic Analyst/Author, 30yr construction cost estimating/system developer, past runner, dogdad, granddad. PSU. Teach astronomy. Speaker. Construction Analytics Blog http://edzarenski.com
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An estimated 15.7 million workers use SNAP. It’s a lifeline for those in low-wage jobs.

Meanwhile, CEOs are paid 280x as much as the typical worker.

Don’t be angry at workers for using food stamps.

Be angry at the corporations paying them so little that they need them.
When (construction) spending is up a little it looks like progress. But we always fight inflation. If spending is up by 3% but inflation is 4%, then real business volume declined by 1%. If spending is down 5%, with 3% to 4% inflation, business volume is down 8% to 9%.
edzarenski.com/2025/09/04/c...
Construction Briefs Sept 2025
The headline construction data is the year-to-date (ytd) comparison. Through July data, ytd2025 is -2.2% compared to ytd2024. But where is it headed. Watch for this. Last year spending was increasi…
edzarenski.com
Mnfg spending is 5x to 6x Data Center spending.

In $, to offset a 6% ($15bil) drop in Mnfg spending, Data Center would need a 45% (15bil/31bil) increase.
New investments began in Mnfg bldgs. 4,3,2yrs ago. Spending skyrocketed, peaked, and now is on the downhill side of the spending curve. Mnfg constr spend forecst -6% this year, -13% in 2026.

Data Center up 50% in 2024, +30% in both 2025 and 2026.

Mnfg spending is 5x to 6x Data Center spending.
Reposted by Ed Z
Today for some reason I'm reminded of the Carlton Tavern in Kilburn. The only building in its street to survive the Blitz, it was illegally demolished in 2015 by a developer without planning permission. Westminster City Council ordered it to be rebuilt, exactly as it was, and it reopened in 2021.
Reposted by Ed Z
Breaking: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has just filed a lawsuit to try to force Mike Johnson to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva.
Is there no historical buildings commission through which all building renovations plans must be approved before destroying history.
Reposted by Ed Z
Here are photos of this afternoon's "No Kings" protest in Providence at the State House.

Read more on the demonstrations in Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts:
https://www.wpri.com/news/politics/where-are-no-kings-protests-happening-in-ri-se-mass/ 
Reposted by Ed Z
MSNBC captured the crowd from the Boston "No Kings" rally:
this is a good 5min read. Take note of the long lead time for new generators. Keep in mind, a data center cannot go down (lose power). Needs primary power source and emergency power source.
For the last few months I've been going through public documents, permits, and satellite images to track the largest data centers in the US.

Today I published the first story about what I've learned.

🧵

www.distilled.earth/p/these-data...
These Data Centers Are Getting Really, Really Big
Gigawatt-sized data centers are becoming the new normal
www.distilled.earth
Reposted by Ed Z
That’s a nice trick, since Biden wasn’t the president on Jan 6.
learned something this morning
Over 40% of corn grown in Indiana is used to make ethanol that cars burn. One acre of corn yields about 16,500 vehicle-miles per year of ethanol, which sounds high until you realize that one acre of solar yields about 2,700,000 vehicle-miles per year: 16,000% more driving for a given plot of land.
No one that every won the Nobel Peace prize has ever said I deserve the peace prize.
I read that Coke is backing out of Super Bowl advertising. Anyone know if Pepsi has contacted NFL yet?
I wrote this article about Construction JOLTS 7 yrs ago. Some of the recent numbers have changed but really nothing else has changed. That's why I do not reference JOLTS for construction to anticipate need for jobs. See plot.
temps near 70 this morning. hard rain. temps will break into the 30s tonight. Lots of 40s and 50s next week or so.
Made a pot of spicy black bean soup.
Forecasting in a Shutdown edzarenski.com/2025/10/07/f...
I look at these small data set calcs to insure I haven’t made some kind of blunder in my forecast. In this case, the small data set gives some comfort level that the annual forecast may not be very far off from what to expect at year end.
It would take 400,000 construction workers 10 years to build $1 trillion worth of new building. Not likely to happen.
Could it be that we've lost many more jobs than are indicated in BLS data, (undocumented day labor) and that those jobs are not tracked in the system. A loss of 7% volume would balance with a loss of 500k jobs. Last time we lost 500k jobs was 2009. (In 2020 we lost 1mil, but most came back quick).
In the last 10 months, construction volume declined by 7%. In the same period, construction jobs declined by just over 1%. And yet some economists are screaming that job openings and hires indicate a labor shortage.

Anyone else see a problem with those statistics?
Started my Construction Economics blg 11 years ago with a statement to this effect. I get 1 or 2 requests every month to host ads on my site. No ads, never have, never will. edzarenski.com
You can’t visit many sites on the web these days without being bombarded by ads, pop-ups, and paywalls.

We’re happy to report that there is absolutely nothing to interrupt you when you read an article on placesjournal.org. No ads, no pop-ups, no distractions. A rare luxury in online reading today.
Reposted by Ed Z
TERRORISM EXPERT HERE:

This statement is a clear example of what is known as “State Terrorism”: When the dictatorship will order all instruments of its state security & intelligence apparatus against its own citizens to terrorize the population.
I hope they won't let them inside the gates