Federal Buying Signals: Forecasts and Labor Rates

What’s in the listing

A forecast is an agency’s public notice of a purchase it plans to make, usually months before the solicitation. DHS publishes its forecasts in the Acquisition Planning Forecast System (planned buys over $250,000). The GSA Acquisition Gateway publishes forecasts from ten civilian agencies, with Interior, Agriculture and Commerce the largest. Civly reads both every week into one table, FORECASTS, with an estimated value range, NAICS code, set-aside, incumbent and planned award date where the agency gives them. A forecast that drops off a feed stays in the table, flagged.

LABOR_RATES has GSA’s CALC+ ceiling rates: the most each Multiple Award Schedule contractor may bill per hour for each labor category, with next-year and second-year prices.

Common uses: building a federal sales pipeline (what is coming, when, how large, which set-aside, who holds the current contract), tracking recompetes, finding teaming partners and competitors, and pricing a bid against published ceiling rates.

How much is in each table

Row counts as of October 6, 2026.

Data dictionary

Two tables, 78 columns in total: FORECASTS and LABOR_RATES. The same tables serve the trial and the subscription. During the free trial, FORECASTS returns the DHS forecasts and LABOR_RATES returns the categories that include Facilities. A subscription adds the Acquisition Gateway forecasts and every other labor category.

Data dictionary: FORECASTS

One row per forecast, from either source, with SOURCE and AGENCY columns. Text is kept as published apart from the columns marked as Civly’s. Named agency contacts are not included. 52 columns.

Data dictionary: LABOR_RATES

One row per labor category on one vendor’s GSA schedule contract, from one nightly CALC+ build. 26 columns.

Joining the tables

The two tables share no key. NORM_INCUMBENT_NAME in FORECASTS and NORM_VENDOR_NAME in LABOR_RATES are normalized the same way, so a forecast’s incumbent can be matched to that company’s ceiling rates. A forecast that lists several incumbents joins them as a; b, and those rows match only after you split the value.

Sample queries

After installing, set your worksheet’s database selector to the installed database and these run as written.

-- Forecasts listed now with an award planned in the next 12 months, largest bands first
SELECT agency, title, naics_code, set_aside, estimated_value_range, incumbent_name,
       planned_award_window_start, planned_award_window_end
FROM FEDERAL_BUYING_SIGNALS.FORECASTS
WHERE listed_in_latest_feed
  AND planned_award_window_start <= DATEADD(month, 12, CURRENT_DATE)
  AND planned_award_window_end >= CURRENT_DATE
ORDER BY estimated_value_min_usd DESC NULLS LAST
LIMIT 50;

-- Recompetes listed now, by industry code
SELECT naics_code, naics_description, COUNT(*) AS recompetes
FROM FEDERAL_BUYING_SIGNALS.FORECASTS
WHERE listed_in_latest_feed AND requirement_type = 'recompete'
GROUP BY naics_code, naics_description
ORDER BY recompetes DESC
LIMIT 20;

-- Forecasts that left the feeds in the last 30 days
SELECT source, agency, title, last_seen_date, solicitation_url
FROM FEDERAL_BUYING_SIGNALS.FORECASTS
WHERE NOT listed_in_latest_feed AND last_seen_date >= DATEADD(day, -30, CURRENT_DATE)
ORDER BY last_seen_date DESC;

-- Ceiling rates for one kind of job, by business size
SELECT business_size, COUNT(*) AS rates,
       MEDIAN(current_price) AS median_rate,
       APPROX_PERCENTILE(current_price, 0.9) AS rate_90th_percentile
FROM FEDERAL_BUYING_SIGNALS.LABOR_RATES
WHERE category ILIKE '%facilities%' AND labor_category ILIKE '%project manager%'
GROUP BY business_size;

-- Recompetes whose incumbent also holds GSA schedule rates
SELECT f.agency, f.title, f.incumbent_name, f.planned_award_window_start,
       COUNT(r.rate_id) AS incumbent_rates, MEDIAN(r.current_price) AS median_ceiling_rate
FROM FEDERAL_BUYING_SIGNALS.FORECASTS f
JOIN FEDERAL_BUYING_SIGNALS.LABOR_RATES r ON r.norm_vendor_name = f.norm_incumbent_name
WHERE f.listed_in_latest_feed AND f.requirement_type = 'recompete'
GROUP BY f.agency, f.title, f.incumbent_name, f.planned_award_window_start
ORDER BY incumbent_rates DESC
LIMIT 25;

Sourcing and attribution

Sources: the DHS Acquisition Planning Forecast System (apfs-cloud.dhs.gov), the GSA Acquisition Gateway forecast tool (acquisitiongateway.gov/forecast) and GSA’s CALC+ ceiling rates (buy.gsa.gov/pricing). All three are U.S. government works, read from their public pages without signing in. Other agencies publish forecasts only on their own sites or in spreadsheets, and those are not included.

No named agency contacts. The contact and small-business contact names, email addresses and phone numbers the agencies publish are not loaded. Email addresses typed into descriptions, notes and incumbent names are replaced with [email removed].

Civly’s own columns: REQUIREMENT_TYPE, ESTIMATED_VALUE_MIN_USD, ESTIMATED_VALUE_MAX_USD, PLANNED_AWARD_WINDOW_START, PLANNED_AWARD_WINDOW_END, NORM_INCUMBENT_NAME, NORM_VENDOR_NAME, FIRST_SEEN_DATE, LAST_SEEN_DATE and LISTED_IN_LATEST_FEED. Everything else is as the agencies publish it. This product is not endorsed by DHS, GSA or any government agency.

Permitted use: not for employment, tenant, credit, insurance or licensing decisions about a person.

For coverage or access questions: matthew@civly.ai