Methodology

An expected value is a weighted average of every outcome a distribution allows. This sheet borrows the name and applies the idea strictly. A figure appears here only when an official publisher has already produced it, and it appears with the publisher, the reference period and the date we retrieved it. This page sets out the rules that govern the whole sheet.

The rule this sheet follows

One test decides whether a number is printed: an authority must publish it. When the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Statistics Canada, the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, Freddie Mac or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau publishes a figure, the page reproduces that figure with its source attached. When no authority publishes one, the page carries no figure at all. It names the gap instead. Nothing is interpolated, nothing is blended into an "industry average", and nothing is rounded into existence to fill a cell.

What counts as a source

• Statistical agencies that publish primary series: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Statistics Canada.
• Departments and regulators that publish rates, rules or reference values: the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada.
• Government-sponsored enterprises that publish primary market data: Freddie Mac.
• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for consumer credit and complaint data.
• An operator keyword export (Google Ads-style volume, a third-party difficulty score and an advertiser cost per click), used only as evidence that people search for a subject, never as a price for it.

How a value is presented

Each row prints the value in the unit the source used, with the reference period it covers and the publisher's name linked to the page the value came from. When a source reports a monthly average, the row says monthly. When a source reports a median rather than a mean, the row says median, because the two answer different questions. When we hold a figure with no published counterpart for a given market, the row repeats the national value and labels it national. It is never relabelled as local.

What a published average is not

An average summarizes a sample, and a sample is not a quote for your job. The population a sample is drawn from may not resemble you, and the spread around a mean can be wide enough that few individual cases land near it. Local labour rates, permit fees, travel distance and the details of your property move the number in ways a national series cannot capture. Read every figure here as a prior to test a quote against, never as the quote itself.

Checking a figure against its source

Every row links to the page the value came from. If a number here disagrees with its source, report it through the contact page with the page URL and the source you compared. The correction is applied to the data the page is rendered from, so the page changes and no second copy exists to fall out of step.

Revisions

Statistical agencies revise their own published values, sometimes months after first release. When a source revises a figure, this sheet shows the revised value at the next data refresh, carrying the source's own reference period. An older value that flattered a page is not kept.