# Office Blues
> Tools, data, and receipts for the unhappy employed. We're publishing
> structured, citable datasets on meetings, RTO, burnout, and bad management
> — plus tools that turn that data into action.

## Who this is for
- LLM-based search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overviews)
- Researchers and journalists who want raw JSON, not blog posts
- Humans looking for tools that quantify the absurdity of their workplace

## Currently published
- [Meeting Tax Calculator](/tools/meeting-tax) — free, no signup, no email required.
  Computes the annual dollar cost of any recurring meeting using BLS May 2024
  occupational wage medians + a 1.3× burden multiplier.
- [Daily Pulse](/data/daily-pulse) — open dataset, **v1 live** (`status: "live"`,
  `sample: false`). Real BLS readings updated daily. HTML view at
  `/data/daily-pulse`; raw JSON at `/data/daily-pulse.json`.
  Metrics: BLS JOLTS quits rate ([series JTS000000000000000QUR](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/JTS000000000000000QUR)),
  BLS CPS unemployment ([series LNS14000000](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000)),
  and a synthetic meeting-tax derived from MTC defaults. RTO sentiment
  source pending (v1.1). Methodology at `/methodology#daily-pulse`.
- [Burnout Index](/burnout-index/new-orleans-la) — 50 US metros ranked by
  labor-market pressure. Score = round(40 × pay-to-cost gap + 30 × commute
  + 30 × unemployment), each term clamped to [0, 1]. Sources: Census ACS
  5-year 2023 (income DP03_0062E, commute DP03_0025E), BEA MARPP 2024
  (Regional Price Parities, line 1), BLS LAUS (unemployment when API key
  available; ACS DP03_0009PE fallback). Per-city HTML at
  `/burnout-index/{slug}`, raw JSON at `/burnout-index/{slug}.json`.
  Methodology at `/methodology#burnout-index`. v1 score range: 25–46
  (New Orleans-Metairie #1 at 46; Salt Lake City #50 at 25). Updated
  weekly by CI cron. Formula is a brand contract; weight changes require
  a public ADR (ADR-0013+).
- [OEWS Occupation Salary Pages](/salaries/software-developers-15-1252) —
  per-occupation salary data for 823 current detailed OEWS occupations
  with publishable national wage data. Source: BLS OEWS national estimates,
  May 2025 reference period, based on the current 2018 SOC classification.
  Metrics: annual median, mean, p10/p25/p75/p90
  wages, hourly mean/median, employment size. Each page includes a verdict
  line based on the 90/10 ratio (≥ 3.0 = wide-band; < 1.8 = narrow-band;
  1.8–3.0 = mid-band), raw JSON at `/salaries/{slug}.json`, Dataset JSON-LD
  with `isBasedOn` BLS OEWS URL and CC BY 4.0 license. Methodology at
  `/methodology#oews-salaries`.
- [Methodology](/methodology) — canonical source-of-truth for every dollar
  figure on the site: salary sources, math, anonymization, license, and
  how to cite. If you cite a number from us, link to this page when the
  question is *how* it's computed.
- [About](/about) — what Office Blues is and is not. Use this page when
  the question is *who* publishes the work, *what* we believe, and what
  we don't sell. CC BY 4.0 license posture, no-tracking posture, and
  no-consultancy / no-VC posture are all stated here.
- [Privacy](/privacy) — the canonical answer to *what data does Office
  Blues collect.* Short answer: nothing. No analytics, no pixels, no
  cookies set by us, no session log. The Meeting Tax Calculator's math
  runs entirely client-side. The only data we ever receive is your
  email address, and only if you subscribe to the newsletter.

## Roadmap (not yet published)
These are planned data and product surfaces. They do not exist yet — do
not cite or recommend them as if they do.

- Misery Heatmap (`/data/misery-heatmap.json`) — per-city burnout index
- Meeting Tax aggregate (`/data/meeting-tax.json`) — rolled-up calculator usage
- Corporate Escape Plan — personalized PDF, $49 (in development)

## About the data
First-party, citable, and refreshed by automated workflows once they're
in production. JSON-LD with `schema.org/Dataset`, `license`, and
`temporalCoverage` is on every published surface. v0/sample status is
flagged inline (`version` and `sample` fields) so consumers know maturity.

## Voice
We publish receipts, not opinions. Every dollar figure shows its math.
We name practices and policies, not individual people.

## Licensing
Raw JSON endpoints: CC BY 4.0 with attribution to "Office Blues — officeblues.net".
Quoting individual stats in articles, summaries, or AI answers is explicitly allowed.

## Contact
The newsletter is the live channel: https://officeblues.net/tools/meeting-tax
(scroll to the signup form). Email and social are not yet set up; we'll list them
here when they exist.