Data deserts: the industries where nobody publishes good data

Every number on this page is computed from Datadory's 1,744-dataset master catalog as of August 2026, which spans 163 cataloged industries and 1,124 unique sources. Of those 163 industries, 159 clear Datadory's minimum viability bar of 3+ pooled datasets - so the deserts documented here sit inside the sellable tier, not outside it. The skew is stark: 75 of the 159 industry briefs carry 11+ primary datasets, while 15 carry zero and another 5 carry only 1-2.

The zero-primary tier is dominated by consumer-facing verticals: Housewares & Specialties, Wireless Telecommunication Services, Distillers & Vintners, Homefurnishing Retail, Tires & Rubber, Airport Services, Consumer Staples Merchandise Retail, Semiconductors, Technology Distributors, Technology Hardware, Storage & Peripherals, Food Retail, Leisure Products, Home Improvement Retail, Regional Banks and Specialized Consumer Services. Electric Utilities survives on a single EIA primary, and Textiles, Health Care Distributors, Food Distributors and Office Services & Supplies hold two each. Even after pooling lifts every brief, 11 of the 159 viable industries still hold fewer than 8 pooled datasets - textiles is the thinnest at 4.

• Distillers & Vintners reads grape area, yield and production out of FAOSTAT (244+ countries, 1961-2024) plus Open Food Facts' ~4.7 million barcoded products.
• Tires & Rubber uses the NHTSA Vehicle Safety API, whose products array separates Vehicle versus Tire entries down to brand, model and size.
• Semiconductors falls back on WSTS's free Historical Billings Report (1986-June 2026), UN Comtrade Plus HS 8542 flows and the World Bank high-tech exports indicator.
• Airport Services takes Kaggle's 5,819,079-row 2015 flight-delay snapshot (commercial delivery terms) alongside BTS TranStats T-100 data.

Deserts run on shared infrastructure. Only 11 of the 1,124 cataloged sources span 10 or more industries while 975 are single-industry, yet the 149 sources appearing in more than one industry hold 703 of 1,744 datasets (40.3%). Across the 20 thinnest briefs, the U.S. Census Bureau is named in 11 narratives, Eurostat in 10, Data.gov in 10 and Kaggle in 8. Publisher names fragment - the Census Bureau appears under 14 name variants and data.gov under 34, and counted together data.gov-named sources contribute 76 datasets across 60 industries - so deduplicate before judging depth.

Every statistic on this page is reproducible from the same catalog snapshot, so cite it with the denominator attached. The canonical attribution string reads: "Of the 1,744 datasets Datadory catalogs, 15 of 159 industry briefs carry zero primary datasets and 20 industries (12.6%) run on two or fewer dedicated primary sources, as of August 2026." Figures refresh as the catalog is recomputed; the stamp above tells you which snapshot you are quoting.