Board and council briefings
For economic development, workforce and local government teams
More questions answered, fewer expensive consulting engagements.
MIQ Studio is an economic and workforce analyst your team can talk to in plain language. Turn a question into analysis your team can review, defend, and put in front of your board or stakeholders while it still matters.
Bring a real question. We'll work through it with you.
The problem
Your team gets more questions than it has time to answer.
Boards, councils, and stakeholders ask for evidence on a timeline your team does not control. Most teams handle it one of four ways.
Hire a consultant.
Valuable for major strategy work. Hard to justify every time a question comes up.
Build it in-house.
Pull the data, clean it, analyze it, format it. Then do it again next cycle.
Rely on the last report.
A study commissioned a few years ago becomes the answer because there is no time or budget to update it.
Skip it.
When the team is stretched, the question goes unanswered and the decision rests on judgment alone.
MIQ gives your team another way.
Ask the question. MIQ brings together the data, does the analysis and gives you something your team can review, refine and use.
You ask. MIQ does the analysis. You decide.
MIQ gives good practitioners more capacity, not less control.
You ask in plain language.
Describe what you need the way you would brief an analyst. There are no datasets to learn and no report menus to navigate.
MIQ does the analysis.
It works across trusted economic and workforce data, compares places and industries, and builds the report. Upload your own studies and plans so it works from what your organization has already concluded.
You review it and own it.
Every figure carries its source and the period it covers. Where the evidence runs out, MIQ says so. Your team verifies and approves the work before it is published.
See it work
Three questions teams bring to MIQ.
These examples use illustrative data, not customer results. Request a demo and bring us a real question to work through together.
MIQ StudioIllustrative exampleChoose an example question
Illustrative example. All figures, sources and vintages below are fictional and are shown only to illustrate the shape of a MIQ Studio response. This is not real data and not a customer result.
Question
Prepare a briefing for next month's board meeting on how our regional economy is doing.
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Your question
MIQ asks what the board already knows, which measures it follows and what decision is coming. If you have uploaded last quarter's briefing and your strategic plan, it works from what your organization already concluded and notes where new findings differ.
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Sources and vintage
The briefing opens with five headline measures, each with its source and the period it covers. Illustrative measure: unemployment rate of 4.3 percent, down 0.2 points from the prior quarter. Derived figures include a short note on how they were derived.
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Comparison basis
Each measure is shown against the state and a stated peer group, so board members can see whether a move is local or general. The peer rule is written next to the table.
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From analysis to recommendation
The briefing closes with recommended actions, each with an owner, a dependency, a risk and the supporting evidence, plus the questions board members are most likely to ask and where each answer comes from.
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Board-ready output
A short executive memo and a slide version, with your organization name and logo, exportable as Word, PowerPoint or PDF and shareable with named board members. MIQ can repeat it on a schedule, for example before each meeting.
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An honest limitation
Asked to explain a one-quarter dip in one measure, MIQ says the evidence supports a description but not a cause, shows the two competing explanations and what data would separate them, and leaves the conclusion to you.
Sources
- Illustrative source: local area unemployment series2025 Q4
- Illustrative source: state and peer series2025 Q4
What should our board know before next week's meeting?
What MIQ shows
- Headline measures, each with its source and period.
- Compared with the state and a stated peer group.
- Recommended actions with an owner, a dependency, a risk and the evidence.
- A limitation MIQ states instead of working around.
Does our workforce support an advanced manufacturer opening a new plant here?
What MIQ shows
- Current employment and recent openings for the occupations the employer needs.
- Wages and occupational mix compared with the state and two regions of similar size, with the selection rule shown.
- A suggested way to answer the prospect.
- What the data cannot tell you.
A company has asked for an incentive to expand here. Is the request justified, and what are the alternatives?
What MIQ shows
- What comes from the application, kept apart from what comes from public sources.
- A comparison with what comparable places did, and how they differ from you.
- Justification, impact, structure, risks and alternatives.
- A plain statement of what the evidence does not support.
The work MIQ takes on
The questions your team already gets.
Start with the question. Each use case shows the work, the output and what you check before you publish.
Industry analysis
Which industries are actually driving growth in our region?
Workforce and training alignment
Are our training programs aligned with where employer demand is going?
Compare places
How do we compare with the places we compete with?
Incentive review
Is this incentive request justified, and what are the alternatives?
Economic conditions
What changed in our economy since the last report?
Work you can defend
The test is whether you would put it in front of your board.
Anything you publish carries your name and your organization's reputation. MIQ shows its work, explains how it reached its conclusions, and cites the data behind them so you can verify the analysis before you use it.
Source and period on every figure.
Every figure carries its source and the period it covers. Derived figures explain how they were derived.
Limits stated, not worked around.
Where data is suppressed, modeled or limited, MIQ says so. Where credible sources disagree, it shows both.
It tells you when the evidence is not enough.
A confident answer that will not survive scrutiny is worth less than no answer.
You review it. You own it.
MIQ gives you the sources, method and limitations. Your team verifies and approves the work before it is published.
Shaped by your organization.
Upload prior studies, strategies and board materials so MIQ works from what you have already concluded. Put your name and logo on the output. The reports and analysis you create are yours to use, publish and share.
Three ways to work with MIQ
All three are built on the same economic and workforce intelligence. The right fit depends on how your organization wants to work with it.
Your team uses MIQ directly.
An economic and workforce analyst your team can talk to in plain language. Ask questions, compare places and industries, build reports, and produce work your team can review and stand behind.
MIQ Enterprise Studio
In developmentMIQ becomes part of how your organization works.
Built for organizations that want MIQ connected to their identity, systems, governance, institutional knowledge, and recurring analytical processes.
MIQ API
Coming March 2027Your systems use MIQ.
Bring MIQ economic and workforce intelligence into your own applications, data pipelines, and workflows.
Customers
MIQ is the economic data team I didn’t have to hire. We have data and analysis available when we need it, and MIQ feels less like a service and more like a partner helping us support our mission.
Built for the teams doing this work.
Metropolis IQ was founded by Erik Caldwell, Josh Shapiro and Kate Spitzer, a former economic developer, university researcher, and govtech technologist. We understand the work because we have done it ourselves, studied it, and built technology to support it.
About Metropolis IQ
Erik Caldwell 
Josh Shapiro 
Kate Spitzer
Bring us a question your team needs answered.
We'll show you how MIQ approaches it, using the kinds of data and analytical work your team does every day.