Jobs
Input-output model
Also called I-O model, economic model.
An input-output model is an accounting framework of interindustry purchases that estimates how spending on a project spreads into output and jobs across a regional economy. In EB-5 it is the standard way a regional center investor shows job creation, and it produces estimated jobs rather than a verified headcount.
What it decides
The USCIS Policy Manual requires an investor relying on an economic input-output model to show the methodology is reasonable, and it tests the model inputs separately depending on whether they are direct jobs, expenditures or revenues. That test applies at the I-526E stage (6 USCIS-PM G.2(D)(5)) and again at the I-829 (6 USCIS-PM G.7(B)). The regulation behind it, 8 CFR 204.6(m)(7)(ii), permits reasonable methodologies including multiplier tables and other economically or statistically valid forecasting devices. Under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(iv)(I) no more than 90 percent of the ten jobs may be indirect, so at least one must be direct, and that same subclause counts an employee of either the new commercial enterprise or the job-creating entity as directly created. That direct job does not have to be a documented payroll hire. 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(v)(I)(aa) lets a regional center investor rely on jobs estimated to have been created directly, verified using the same methodologies, and USCIS states that direct jobs counting toward the requisite 10 percent include those estimated by economically and statistically valid methodologies at both entities (6 USCIS-PM G.2(D)(4)). Payroll records, tax documents and Forms I-9 are how direct jobs are proved outside the regional center program, and are one way to support a direct-jobs input inside it, not a threshold the model must clear.
Where this is explained properly
Pages here that go into input-output model rather than mentioning it.
Related terms
- MultiplierA multiplier is the ratio an input-output model applies to an initial change in a project's spending, earnings or jobs to estimate the total change in output, value added, earnings or jobs in a chosen industry and region.
- RIMS IIRIMS II is the Bureau of Economic Analysis multiplier set that estimates how much total output, value added, earnings and employment a given change in final demand generates in a chosen group of US counties, and it is the model behind many EB-5 regional center job studies.
- IMPLANIMPLAN, short for IMpact analysis for PLANning, is a commercial input-output modeling system and regional data set developed by the US Forest Service in the 1980s and privatized in the 1990s, now one of the models most often used to estimate EB-5 job creation.
- REMIREMI stands for Regional Economic Models, Inc., the firm whose Policy Insight simulation model the Department of Energy used to estimate direct and indirect job impacts in its State Energy Program evaluation. In EB-5 practice the name is used as shorthand for the model itself, which job studies name alongside RIMS II and IMPLAN.
- Economic impact reportAn economic impact report is the economist's analysis that turns a project's spending, revenues or direct hiring into an estimated job total, and the project application a regional center files for each investment offering must include one. The statute and USCIS call it a credible economic analysis.
- Expenditure modelAn expenditure model estimates EB-5 job creation by feeding a project's spending into an economic input-output model, rather than feeding it the project's projected revenues or a verified count of direct hires. USCIS does not use the label itself, but it recognizes expenditures as one of the input types an investor may rely on and requires the investor to show that the expenditure figures are reasonable.
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