How the numbers work
Public data only. Every figure on the site comes from one of the sources below, unchanged except for the arithmetic described here.
Two layers that are never mixed
Countries are compared with World Bank indicators, which share definitions. Inside Thailand and Vietnam we use national sources, which are richer but not comparable across countries. A Thai province is only ever ranked against other Thai provinces, a Vietnamese one against Vietnamese provinces.
The four lenses for countries
People is urban population growth: people moving into cities. Jobs is growth in employed people (labour force × (1 − unemployment), ILO-modelled). Businesses is growth in new limited-liability firms registered (World Bank Entrepreneurship data). Money is real GDP growth. Each uses its own latest year, shown next to the number.
The four lenses for Thailand
People: registered population, Department of Provincial Administration, Dec 2024 to Dec 2025. Jobs: employees insured under Section 33 of the Social Security Act, Dec 2024 to Dec 2025. Businesses: employers registered with the Social Security Office, the same period. Money: commercial-bank deposits, Bank of Thailand district table, Jul 2025 to Jul 2026.
The four lenses for Vietnam
From the National Statistics Office (formerly GSO). People: average population, 2024 to 2025 (preliminary), with net migration per 1,000 residents alongside. Jobs: employed workers, 2024 to 2025 (preliminary). Businesses: newly registered enterprises, 2023 to 2024. Money: net revenue of active enterprises, 2023 to 2024, nominal. The latest year is often preliminary.
Vietnam's 2025 merger
On 1 July 2025 Vietnam's 63 provinces became 34. Every merger joined whole provinces, so the statistics, still published for the 63, add up exactly into the new ones; we check that the 63 sum to the national total every year from 2010. Maps are rebuilt from the 63 former shapes, and the old borders are drawn dashed. Far-offshore archipelagos are not drawn at this scale.
Proxies, and why
Thailand's company register has no clean province series in open data, so businesses are proxied by employers registered with social security: every business with staff must register. Registered population undercounts places people move to without changing their house registration, such as Bangkok and the Eastern Economic Corridor, and leaves out most migrant workers. Formal jobs leave out the informal sector, roughly half of Thai employment.
Momentum score
Each lens is turned into a percentile rank within its layer (11 countries, 77 provinces or 234 districts), and the score is their average. We use ranks because Bangkok and Singapore are so much larger than their neighbours that raw values would hide everyone else. A missing lens is left out, never counted as zero.
Bank data by district
The Bank of Thailand publishes deposits, credit and branches monthly, only for districts with four or more commercial banks (about 235). Province money figures add up those districts, so they are not full-province totals. Head-office balances are not assigned to any place. Credit can jump when a large borrower moves; we flag swings above ±50%. Values are nominal.
Updates
Bank data monthly, social security yearly (December), registered population yearly, World Bank yearly. The pipeline stops rather than publish numbers it cannot verify: every source has a structure fingerprint and a total cross-check.