The city publishes its own index. You just have to know where to look.

Every week, Philadelphia quietly tells you exactly what's happening to it. Deeds get recorded. Permits get issued. Business licenses get stamped. Layoff notices get filed. None of it is secret — it's just scattered across a half-dozen databases with government-grade user interfaces, where almost nobody reads it.

We read it. All of it, every week. Then we compress it into THE INDEX — a single composite score of city economic activity, where 100 equals the trailing 12-week baseline — and write you one email about what moved it: the deals, the permits, the LLCs, and the people behind them.

That's the whole trick, and the name. The city publishes its own index; we're just the ones doing the arithmetic.

The methodology promise

Every number we print is checkable against the public record — and we tell you which record. When we rank the city's biggest buyers, the methodology is on the page. When the Index moves, the components are in the data. If we ever can't show our work, we don't print the number. And when filed doesn't mean built, we say so.

Where the numbers come from

Our data comes from City of Philadelphia open-data APIs — Department of Records deed transfers and L&I permits & licenses — plus the Pennsylvania Department of State corporate registry, PA WARN notices, and FRED. Every number in every issue is checkable against the public record.