Data Methodology

1. Primary Data Sources

Bureau of Labor Statistics -- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS)

The BLS OEWS program publishes annual estimates of employment and wages for hundreds of occupations across metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. For Terican, we use OEWS data to derive labor cost benchmarks for each skilled trade -- plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, painters, and more.

US Census Bureau -- American Community Survey (ACS)

The ACS 5-year estimates provide demographic and economic data at the city, county, and metro level. Terican uses ACS data to construct cost-of-living (COL) indexes for each city.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)

CMS publishes geographic practice cost indexes (GPCI) that reflect relative costs of physician work, practice expenses, and malpractice insurance across geographic areas.

2. Cost-of-Living Adjustment Process

National average costs are a poor guide for any specific market. For each city, we construct a composite COL adjustment factor that weights:

• 1.Local wage levels for the relevant trade occupation (50% weight)
• 2.General consumer price index for the metro area (30% weight)
• 3.Housing cost index as a proxy for business overhead (20% weight)

The resulting city-specific multiplier is applied to national cost baselines to produce localized low, median, and high estimates.

3. Refresh Cycle and Data Currency

Terican operates on a 90-day rolling refresh cycle. Each data source has its own update schedule:

When new source data is released, our pipeline automatically reprocesses affected cities and regenerates content pages.

4. Confidence Levels and Uncertainty

Each cost estimate carries a confidence rating that reflects data quality and coverage: