Jobs
RIMS II
Also called RIMS 2, Regional Input-Output Modeling System.
RIMS 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.
What it decides
BEA sells the multipliers two ways: $520 for a region, which must be one or more contiguous counties, and $160 for a single industry across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The present set was released on 5 May 2026 and is built from 2024 regional data and 2017 national benchmark input-output data, the regional side refreshed about yearly and the benchmark about every five years. Output, value added and earnings multipliers apply to each $1 of final demand change, while employment multipliers give jobs per $1 million, so the two are not interchangeable in a spreadsheet. The model assumes fixed purchase patterns, uniform production within an industry, no supply constraints and no time dimension, and the User's Guide warns that the change being measured should be permanent or at least persistent enough to work through the economy, and that a change big enough to alter the structure of a region will not be captured. BEA asks anyone citing the multipliers to state that it "does not endorse any resulting estimates and/or conclusions". For EB-5 the sharpest point is the job count. RIMS II employment is full-time and part-time jobs together and is deliberately not full-time equivalent, while 8 CFR 204.6(e) counts only a position requiring at least 35 working hours a week, does count two or more employees sharing one such position, and never counts combinations of part-time positions even when the hours add up. A job study has to bridge that gap in the open, which is not how an offering tends to present it. The requirement being bridged toward is statutory: 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(F)(i)(II) makes the I-956F carry a credible economic analysis resting on economically and statistically valid and transparent methodologies, and 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(E)(v)(I) is what lets an investor rely on estimated jobs at all. USCIS names no model. Volume 6, Part G of the Policy Manual speaks only of an economic input-output model and asks whether the multipliers and the assumptions about the geographic reach of the project are reasonable, so no study is approved because it used RIMS II.
Where this is explained properly
Pages here that go into rims ii 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.
- Input-output modelAn 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.
- 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.
Checked against primary sources on . Back to the glossary