By region: where the demand concentrates

What this row is

The network's demand posture, Busier, Steady, or Cooling, is a single headline word for the whole network. It does not tell you whether that word is true everywhere at once or is really being carried by one storm-exposed pocket of locations. By region is the row that answers that question: it takes the same busier/steady/slower read behind the hero band at the top of Forecasting and breaks it out one tile per region, so you can see where the posture actually concentrates rather than reading a single network-wide average.

This row is not a separate calculation. It reads the exact same by_region breakdown already sitting inside the network's demand snapshot, the one the hero band's distribution bar summarizes as percentages. By region is that breakdown made visible, tile by tile, instead of collapsed into one bar.

Where to find it

Open Forecasting from the HQ sidebar, in the Intelligence group alongside Benchmarks, Margin & Cash, and Impact, or go directly to hq.verinode.ai/forecasting. By region is the first horizontally scrolling row on the page, sitting directly under the hero band and the network's read-on-demand paragraph, above the Industry signals row. See Forecasting: your network's demand posture, next 90 days for how the whole page fits together, and Network demand outlook: Busier, Steady, or Cooling for the hero band this row's numbers come from.

What each tile shows

One tile per region, each carrying four things:

• Label. The region, generally the state your locations sit in, for example FL, TX, or CA. This is the raw state value on file for that location's profile, uppercased, not a full state name and not a broader bucket like South or West (those broader Census-region buckets exist elsewhere in Verinode, for choosing which published indicators apply, but this row's tiles are state-level).
• Value. How many of your locations sit in that region. Every location that shares a state gets the exact same busier/steady/slower read for that state (more on why below), so this number is simply a headcount: how many locations fall under that tile, not a share or a percentage.
• Sub. The plain-language posture for that region: Trending busier, Holding steady, or Cooling off.
• Accent color. Green for a busier region, copper for steady, ember red for cooling, the identical palette the hero band's distribution bar uses.

There is no click-through or drill-down on an individual tile. The tile states the region's read; the underlying reasons live in the industry signals feeding that state's outlook, described in the section on how a region's level is decided below.

How a region's count and level are derived

Every location in your network has a state on file (or does not). Verinode's scheduled network aggregation job computes one demand outlook per distinct state represented in your roster, not one per location, using the same published, public industry indicators (claims frequency, catastrophe and severe storm losses, construction activity, input costs, and the rest) scoped to that state, exactly as described in Network demand outlook: Busier, Steady, or Cooling. It then reuses that one outlook for every location that shares the state, and counts them.

Two things follow from that, and both are worth holding onto when you read this row:

• A region's level is not a "dominant" read among mixed locations. Every location inside a given region tile shares the identical busier/steady/slower level, because it is the same computed outlook applied to all of them. There is no internal split to see inside a single tile; the split lives across tiles, not within one.
• The value is a plain headcount, computed once per distinct state and reused. A network with 40 locations in Florida and 2 in Vermont still only computes two demand outlooks total, one per state, then counts locations against each. The count on the tile is how many locations fall under that state, nothing more.

Locations with no state on file cannot be scored at all, and do not count toward any region tile or toward the network total the hero band shows. If Forecasting looks thinner than your roster suggests it should, check profile completeness under Location Directory; a missing state is the most common reason a location is invisible here.

Why "national" renders as Unspecified

The region key behind each tile comes straight from a location's state field. When a location's state is blank, unset, or cannot be read, the aggregation job falls back to a shared bucket internally labeled national, rather than dropping that location from the count entirely. On the page, that internal national bucket is relabeled Unspecified so it reads as what it is: a group of locations Verinode could not place in a specific state, not a literal claim about the whole country's demand. If your network has locations with an incomplete profile, you will see an Unspecified tile alongside your named-state tiles; its count, level, and color behave exactly like any other tile, the label is simply the only thing that differs.

Sort order and the twelve-tile cap

Tiles are sorted by count, largest region first, and the row shows at most the top twelve. A region carrying fewer locations than the twelfth-largest simply does not get a tile in this row at all, its locations are still counted in the network-wide totals the hero band and the network read use, they just do not get their own visible tile once a network has more than twelve distinct regions on file. For most networks, with locations concentrated in a handful of states, this cap rarely matters; it exists for the largest, most geographically spread networks so the row stays a scannable width rather than growing without bound.

When the row does not appear

By region respects the identical locations-floor gate as the rest of the page: below that floor, the hero band collapses into the single "Building the network read" placeholder card, and the entire By region row, along with its title, is withheld rather than shown with an empty or partial tile set. This is deliberate: a distribution over too few locations risks describing one or two locations by elimination, so Verinode would rather show nothing than show a "split" that is really just a couple of locations dressed up as a region. See Network demand outlook: Busier, Steady, or Cooling for what that cold state looks like and why the exact floor is not published as a number in the interface.

Separately, even once a network clears that floor, the row can still have nothing to show if the snapshot has no regional breakdown yet (for example, immediately after HQ access is provisioned and before the first aggregation run completes). In that case the row is simply absent from the page for that load, the same "data will appear as it flows in" pattern used across the platform rather than an error message or a placeholder card. There is no separate "no regions yet" copy to look for; the row's title and tiles both disappear together, and reappear once the next snapshot has data.

How to use it

Read the hero band's headline word first, then come to this row to see whether that word is broad-based or concentrated. A network reading "Busier" because one hurricane-exposed state is carrying most of the busier count behaves very differently from one reading "Busier" because every region is leaning the same way, and the right network-wide move, staging equipment toward a specific region, opening a hiring push in one state, or holding a network-wide line, follows the region breakdown, not the headline word alone. The Industry signals row directly beneath By region gives you the published national series behind the reads (claims frequency, storm activity, input costs, and the rest); use it to see what is actually driving a region you are looking at here. See What's driving demand: the industry driver table for how that row's series work on the IQ side, and Industry Data tab: macro series for the whole network for the full published catalog with sources.

Best-practice example

Say the hero band reads Busier, 14 locations, and By region shows a Gulf Coast state tile at the top with the largest count and a green Trending busier sub-label, an inland state tile lower down reading ember red Cooling off, and a small Unspecified tile with two locations. That pattern tells you the network-wide "Busier" headline is really a Gulf Coast story: route equipment staging and any hiring push there specifically rather than treating the whole network as uniformly busier, check whether the cooling inland state has room to tighten cost in the meantime, and fix the two Unspecified locations' state field under Location Directory so the next snapshot places them correctly.

Related help articles

• Forecasting: your network's demand posture, next 90 days
• Network demand outlook: Busier, Steady, or Cooling
• "What it means": the locations to plan for and the network move
• What HQ sees: the network privacy boundary
• Industry Data tab: macro series for the whole network
• HQ Location Directory
• Network Health

Data sources