Citable numbers for pitch letters

Every number a letter uses must trace to a source a prospect can click. This file is the bank. Add rows only with a URL and a date; prune anything that ages past a year.

Michigan cost pressure (for the cloud-exit and honest-AI letters)

Source: MITechNews, "How Much Costs Are Rising for Michigan Businesses, By Industry," April 10, 2026. https://mitechnews.com/news/how-much-costs-are-rising-for-michigan-businesses-by-industry

• Manufacturing and automotive: costs up 10% to 22% (tariffs, inputs, shipping).
• Logistics and transportation: up 15% to 30% (fuel-driven).
• Restaurants and hospitality: up 8% to 18%.
• Agriculture: up 12% to 25%.
• U-M RSQE forecasts local inflation at 2.8% in both 2026 and 2027.
• Quoted response patterns include "investing in efficiency and automation," which is the door our letters walk through.

Cloud repatriation (for the cloud-exit letter)

• Barclays CIO survey: 83% of enterprises plan to repatriate at least some workloads from public cloud to private infrastructure. Via NovoServe, "Cloud Repatriation: Trends and Statistics," December 2025. https://novoserve.com/blog/cloud-repatriation-trends-and-statistics-of-enterprises-leaving-cloud
• Already on the public ledger (2026-09-05): 2026 surveys have 86% of CIOs planning to move some workloads back, typical savings 30 to 60 percent. Keep the two claims straight: 83% is Barclays enterprises, 86% is the CIO survey; cite whichever the letter uses, never blend them.

Local demand (for the hiring-signal letter)

• JobToday listed 336 data engineer openings in Grand Rapids, September 2026. https://jobtoday.com/us/jobs-data-engineer/mi_grand-rapids Weak source (aggregator); prefer the employer's own posting in any letter. The ledger's 69-opening count from 2026-09-05 came from direct postings and is the safer public number.

Source-quality note

The 2026-09-06 signal-hunt crawls showed the general-web crawler pads results with noise (dictionary pages, off-topic aggregators). "Grand Rapids" job aggregators listed roles in Bangkok and Dubai. Rule: an aggregator count never becomes an {OBSERVED_SIGNAL}; only a company's own posting, own press, or a named story about them qualifies.