Jobs can be documented in two ways; direct employment or indirect employment. Regional Centers simplify job creation because we can use direct and indirect jobs. 

• Direct employment involves hiring individuals directly, paying a salary, and benefits, and tracking employment-related documents such as W-2s and tax returns. If direct employment is being considered for EB-5 job creation, the jobs must be maintained for two years each.

• Because regional center EB-5 investments are typically larger-scale projects, regional centers often utilize indirect job creation. Indirect jobs, or induced jobs, are a form of job creation measured through budget expenditure and economic impact. Job creation is calculated using an economic Input-Output model, where budget expenditures are the input and jobs are the measured output. These kinds of models are often utilized when directly tracking employment would be too burdensome. For example, Input-Output models are utilized to calculate jobs lost due to natural disasters, or jobs created from economic stimulus packages.

• Using these models, EB-5 project managers are not necessarily tracking the directly hired employees for the purposes of documentation job creation, but rather, the economic expenditure used to calculate the economic equivalence of jobs created.