Data & freshness
How this site stays current, and exactly what every label means. We never present a projection as an official figure, and we never call a delayed dataset 'live'.
All statistics
Every number this site tracks, each labelled reported, projected, or estimated. Switch the view to compare the latest available period against the last complete fiscal year, or see the five-year trend.
U.S. unemployment rate (BLS)
Three labels on every number
The hardest problem with immigration data is that official figures lag — sometimes by months, sometimes by a year or more. Rather than guess and present it as fact, we label the origin of every value:
A real figure published by the source agency. Example: USCIS FY2024 H-1B approvals (399,395), CBP FY2024 nationwide encounters, the BLS unemployment rate we fetch live.
A projection computed from reported data — e.g. a full-year pace scaled from the elapsed share of the current fiscal year. Clearly not an official total.
Derived or apportioned from reported totals — e.g. a state or country share of a national figure, or a tracked-employer subset. An estimate, not an official figure.
And a freshness label for the reporting period
So a card reading “Border encounters · FY2026 YTD” with a Projected tag means: the year-to-date period, value projected from reported data — not an official YTD total. Toggle the dashboard to Last complete FY to see the most recent Reported figure.
How current each source is
Some feeds are genuinely live; others are official figures published on a delay. Here is the honest state of each, newest first:
Official immigration data is published on a delay — some sources monthly, others only once a year. Where an agency offers a machine-readable feed we fetch it live at build time; the rest we keep as the latest official published figures, clearly labelled and never presented as more current than they are.
- BLS Unemployment RateLive feedU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · updates monthlyCurrentLatest: August 2026 · through Aug 31, 2026Live machine-readable API
- State WARN Layoff NoticesLive feed · 5 states: CA, NJ, TX, VA, WAState labor and workforce agencies · updates weeklyCurrentLatest: Notices through 2026-09-09 · through Sep 9, 20267,496 real noticesEvery notice links to its state portalPartial state coverage — not a national total
- CBP Nationwide EncountersLive feedU.S. Customs and Border Protection (DHS) · updates monthly~2 months behindLatest: FY2026 through July 2026 · through Jul 31, 2026Live machine-readable CSV
- ICE Enforcement & RemovalsCurated · delayedU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (DHS) · updates monthly~3 months behindLatest: FY2026 YTD (ERO dashboard) · through Jun 9, 2026Latest official published figuresDelayed reportingCurated / manual source
- State Dept Visa IssuancesCurated · delayedU.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs · updates monthly~12 months behindLatest: Monthly tables to Sep 2025 · FY2024 annual · through Sep 30, 2025Latest official published figuresDelayed reportingCurated / manual source
The State Department publishes monthly issuances as PDFs on a lag (no machine-readable feed). Current-year figures shown on the site are clearly-labelled projections until the official tables catch up — we never present them as reported totals.
- USCIS H-1B Employer Data HubCurated · delayedU.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (DHS) · updates annual~23 months behindLatest: FY2024 (latest release) · through Sep 30, 2024Latest official published figuresDelayed reportingCurated / manual source
- DOL OFLC Disclosure (LCA / PERM)Curated · delayedU.S. Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification · updates quarterly~23 months behindLatest: FY2024 (latest release) · through Sep 30, 2024Latest official published figuresDelayed reportingCurated / manual source
How it refreshes (and why it is not “live”)
A scheduled job re-runs the data pipeline and rebuilds the site. Sources with a reliable machine-readable feed are fetched automatically at build time (with a real fetchedAt stamp); the rest are maintained as the latest published values plus labelled projections until their feed is wired. “Last refreshed” is when our pipeline last ran — it is not a claim that the agencies publish in real time.
| Source | Feed | Mode | Last fetched |
|---|---|---|---|
| bls_unemployment | BLS Public Data API | auto-fetch | Sep 15, 2026, 1:23 AM UTC |
| cbp_encounters | CBP Nationwide Encounters (CSV) | auto-fetch | Sep 15, 2026, 1:23 AM UTC |
| ice_stats | ICE ERO statistics / annual report | published-report | — |
| uscis_h1b | USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub (CSV) | published-file | — |
| dos_visa | State Dept monthly NIV/IV tables | published-table | — |
| dol_lca | DOL OFLC disclosure data | published-file | — |
| warn_layoffs | Texas via data.texas.gov (Socrata) — TX only; other states curated | auto-fetch (partial) | Sep 15, 2026, 1:23 AM UTC |
Live example: the U.S. unemployment rate (4.1% for August 2026) was fetched from the BLS Public Data API at Sep 15, 2026, 1:23 AM UTC.
More
See the methodology for metric definitions, the sources page for every dataset, and the refresh status page for per-source ingestion health.