Anthropic launches a Claude connector for the Economic Index

Anthropic launched a Claude connector for its Economic Index on July 22, 2026, letting anyone query the organization's dataset on real-world AI usage directly through conversation instead of digging through static reports.

What's new

Anthropic's announcement states plainly: "Today we're launching the Anthropic Economic Index connector for Claude, which lets anyone explore that data directly." Rather than reading through published reports, users can now ask Claude natural-language questions about the data — the company gives examples like "Which occupations use AI the most?" and "What are the most common ways people in Colorado use Claude?"

Setup is designed to be near-instant: "Getting started takes about a minute. In claude.ai, open the connectors menu, find the Anthropic Economic Index in the directory, and enable it." Once enabled, the connector works inside any conversation with any Claude model — no separate app or installation required. Users can start with a broad question, drill into specifics, and ask Claude to surface the underlying data behind any answer it gives. The full datasets remain freely downloadable on Anthropic's website independent of the connector.

Context

The Anthropic Economic Index launched in 2025 as a standing research effort to track how AI usage shows up in real economic activity — by occupation, geography, and task type — using anonymized Claude conversation data. Anthropic has published periodic reports under the Index (on topics like usage "primitives" and adoption "cadences") that have become reference material for researchers, journalists, and policymakers trying to quantify AI's labor-market impact. Until now, accessing that data meant reading Anthropic's own written reports or downloading raw datasets.

Why it matters

Turning a static research dataset into a queryable Claude connector lowers the barrier for policymakers, journalists, and businesses to actually use Anthropic's economic research rather than just cite headline findings from it. It's also a concrete example of Anthropic using its own product to make its research more accessible — folding a public-interest research effort directly into the same interface millions of people already use, rather than requiring a trip to a separate report or dashboard.