USA Times Data Desk
The USA Times Data Desk is the newsroom’s data and investigations unit. It collects prices, fees and public records directly from the source, verifies them item by item, and builds the charts and tables behind USA Times investigations. Every figure it publishes is traceable to a named, dated source.
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IMAX Signed 28% More New Theaters in 2025. Its Backlog Shrank Anyway — Because It’s Building Faster Than It’s Selling.
IMAX signed 28% more new theater deals in 2025 than 2024. Its backlog of unbuilt systems shrank anyway — because installations are converting faster than ever. We read the full SEC-linked earnings release to see what that means for 2026.
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Two YouTubers Made Horror Movies for a Combined $10.75 Million. This Year, They Out-Grossed Disney’s New Star Wars Film — Combined.
Obsession cost $750,000 and made $475 million. Backrooms cost $10 million and made $240.81 million. Combined, two YouTuber-directed horror films out-grossed Disney’s $166.4 million Star Wars release — on about 6% of its budget.
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A Viral Claim Said AI Data Centers Raised Some Electricity Bills 267%. The Real Number Is Still Bad — Just Different.
A viral claim said AI data centers raised some electricity bills 267%. We traced the number to a PolitiFact fact-check — it measures wholesale prices, not actual bills. The real residential increase in the hardest-hit market, Washington D.C., is still +94%.
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In 2023, 12% of S&P 500 Companies Told the SEC That AI Was a Business Risk. In 2025, 72% Did.
Only 12% of S&P 500 companies named AI as a material risk in their 2023 SEC filings. By 2025 it was 72%. We read the underlying 10-K research to see exactly which AI risks — reputational, cyber, legal — companies are now legally required to name.
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America’s Quits Rate Has Been Frozen at 2.0% for Two Months. That’s a Third Below Its Great Resignation Peak.
BLS’s newest JOLTS release shows the quits rate frozen at 2.0% for a second straight month — down a third from its 3.0% Great Resignation peak. We pulled the agency’s own release to show how far the ‘low-hire, low-fire’ labor market has drifted from 2021.
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Instacart Was Showing Different Shoppers Different Prices for the Same Item. It Took a Consumer Reports Investigation 13 Days to End It.
74% of items on Instacart had more than one price at the same time, some shoppers paying 23% more. We traced the 13-day timeline from Consumer Reports’ investigation to Instacart ending the practice — and the FTC probe, $60M settlement, and new state laws that followed.
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The Trademark Office Had a Five-Month Backlog. Its Fix Was an AI Agent That Does the Job in Five Minutes.
USPTO’s trademark classification backlog took up to five months to clear by hand. We read the agency’s own press release on ‘Class ACT,’ the AI agent now doing the same job in about five minutes — and the fee reform that already cut exam wait times before it.
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H-1B Registrations Have Collapsed 72% From Their Peak — And a New Rule This Year Explains the Steepest Drop
H-1B registrations peaked at 758,994 in FY2024, inflated by duplicate filings. We traced the fall to roughly 211,600 this year through USCIS’s own data — and found a new wage-weighted lottery, not just fewer applicants, behind the steepest drop yet.
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Game Developers Turned Sharply Against AI This Year. The Industry’s Own Survey Shows Why.
GDC’s annual industry survey shows the share of game developers calling generative AI’s impact ‘negative’ has jumped from 18% to 52% in two years — the same window Square Enix said it wants AI handling 70% of QA work by 2027.
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NYC Has 7,625 Sidewalk Sheds Covering 334 Miles. The City Says the Number Is Falling — But the Oldest Sheds Are Multiplying.
NYC says sidewalk sheds are down 17% citywide. We checked the DOB’s own data against the City Council’s 2025 baseline and found the number of sheds standing 5+ years actually grew, from 334 to 356, even as the overall count fell.