County demand÷supply Build-quality factors Combined - bare board Combined - assembly

How to use: pick a Layer in the map's top-left corner to switch the view; the active layer's color key appears below, and you can hover any county or marker for its numbers.

The 10 metros with the biggest demand÷supply gap

Ranked by the same demand-vs-supply signal the county map shades - counties pooled into official Census CBSA metros and scored on local board-consuming demand against nearby PCB/EMS supply (demand-weighted). Metros, not raw counties, because the smoothed county score peaks in the exurban ring just outside a dense core (demand access, no local fab), so a raw top-10 lists satellite counties rather than recognizable places; pooling to the metro fixes that. This is the demand gap only - it does not weigh operating conditions (see the build-quality and combined layers for that). “None identified nearby” means no fab/assembler matched the name-based classifier within range, not a verified zero.

The 10 best metros to operate a fab (build-quality only)

Ranked purely on operating conditions - supplier ecosystem, engineering talent, and industrial electricity price - not demand. Marked in the accent color on the map. This answers “where could a fab run well and cheaply,” a different question from the demand-gap metros; note recognizable build hubs like Indianapolis, Philadelphia, and Columbus rank high here that aren’t top demand-gaps.

The 10 best metros to build - by fab type

Counties pooled into official Census CBSA metros (2023 crosswalk; demand and fab/assembler supply summed across each), ranked for the selected fab type and outlined + striped in the accent color on the map. Two different businesses, opposite siting logic: bare-board fab = wet copper-etching/plating - capital-heavy, needs water + chemical permitting (37 firms nationally); its gap shows where board fabrication is absent. Assembly / EMS = surface-mount - light regulation, mostly talent + space (69 firms); a faster, lower-capital play. Supply uses distance falloff, so shops just outside a metro still count. Robustness: the top tier (Chicago, NY, LA, Minneapolis) is stable across distance constants; using real CBSAs rather than hand-picked anchors pulled Western and Texan metros (LA, Houston, Denver, Dallas, SF) onto the list, correcting an earlier East-Coast skew. Caveats: “none identified nearby” means no fab/assembler matched the name-based classifier within range - read as “no identified cluster,” not a literal zero. Each firm counts once regardless of size, and the five consuming industries are weighted equally; all figures are name-based inference on one directory - directional, not a verified census.