Good Jobs First

Empower constituency-based groups, public officials and journalists seeking to make economic development programs and deals more transparent, accountable and cost-effective.

We publish 50-state "report card" studies on key accountability metrics such as online transparency, job creation and job quality standards (wages, benefits, full-time hours, etc.) and monitoring and enforcement (clawbacks, rescissions, recalibrations, etc.). We have published more than 120 additional studies: on specific kinds of subsidy programs (e.g., tax increment financing), on specific aspects (including more analyses of the geographic distributions of subsidies that any group in the world), on specific states and/or groups of states, and on current issues (e.g., state agency privatization). We actively train, speak, publicize and testify about our findings; provide active assistance to diverse organization; and continuously grow and improve Subsidy Tracker.

We are uniquely qualified to perform this work and have long been recognized as the nation's leading policy resource center on economic development accountability reforms such as disclosure, job quality standards and clawbacks.

As described elsewhere, we have won far greater disclosure by states than ever existed before, and that public data has in turn enabled all kinds of reform debates over clawbacks, job quality standards and other best practices.