What's New - October 2003

Site of the Month:  American Community Survey, 2002

One of the most important innovations coming out of the Census Bureau is the American Community Survey (ACS), an annual nationwide survey that updates questions traditionally asked only in the decennial census. The biggest complaint about the Census has always been that one has to wait ten years to get new socioeconomic data. The ACS addresses that problem by surveying a sample of the US population each year. Currently based on a survey of 820,000 households, the ACS provide estimates of detailed subjects for the nation, all states, most areas with a population of 250,000 or more, and selected areas of 65,000 or more. In 2004, the ACS is scheduled (if the budget is holds up) to expand to 3 million households annually. After five years of full operation, data will be available down to the census tract level. The ACS permanently replaces the revered decennial census long form.

The Census Bureau has just released the 2002 ACS data. For this reason, we offer the ACS to our subscribers as site of the month. 

To learn about the methodology and plans for the ACS, visit its home page:  http://www.census.gov/acs/www/index.html. Because the data are based on a smaller sample than the decennial census, the statistical reliability of estimates due to sampling variability can be large, and the Census Bureau has taken great care to prominently indicate confidence intervals.  You can clearly see where the sample-based ACS estimates are statistically significant changes from earlier values, such as from the 2000 decennial census.

You can explore ACS data in a variety of ways.  If you’re familiar with the American Factfinder, you can use it to examine detailed ACS data.  Visit:  http://factfinder.census.gov/ and select “2002 American Community Survey.”

To quickly view important trends, Census has also prepared “Change Profiles” that show how key measures have changed between 2000 and 2002.  You’ll find profiles for general demographics, selected social characteristics (including education), economic characteristics, and housing characteristics.  http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/Profiles/Chg/2002/0002/index.htm

 In addition, Census has also generated “Ranking Tables.”  These tables show where states and included counties ranked in 2002 in terms of poverty levels, educational attainment, median income, foreign born population, housing costs and other measures.  Most tables contain data for the 50 states, 231 counties and 69 of the largest cities.
http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/Ranking/index.htm

Metro Economies Report 

The economic consulting firm Global Insight, in a study prepared for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, has compiled a wealth of estimates of aggregate economic activity in metropolitan areas.  Their report, released in July, shows metropolitan areas account for more than 85% of U.S. economic output,  five out of every six jobs, and nearly 95 percent of high tech and business service employment. The appendix to the report contains a number of useful tables, including a ranking of 319 metropolitan areas by gross product from 1998 through 2002.  There is also data on employment and output growth, share of gross state product contributed by metropolitan economies, and housing data.  http://www.usmayors.org/metroeconomies03/metroecon_appendix_0603.pdf

The full 85-page report—with detailed profiles of the recent performance and economic outlook for each of the 20 largest metro areas is also available at:
http://www.usmayors.org/metroeconomies03/metroecon_0603.pdf

BLS Unemployment Rate and Employment Growth Maps

Monthly data on employment and unemployment rates are a staple of the business pages, and the most timely data for tracking local economic activity.  A new feature on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website adds mapping capability to the familiar monthly  tabular reports  on state, metropolitan area, and county employment and unemployment.  You can generate a national map showing state level data, and state maps showing county or metropolitan data.  It's a quick and convenient way to visualize geographic variations in economic conditions.  Take a look at:
http://data.bls.gov/servlet/map.servlet.MapToolServlet?survey=la

ZookNIC Internet Domain Name Data

We now take it as a commonplace of our everyday work with data, but the Internet still continues to be a marvel. To get some idea of how much and how fast it has spread, its interesting to examine the historical data assembled by Matt Zook’s Internet Geography Project.  His site, ZookNIC, offers a wide range of subscription reports that track domain names in detail, but some summary data is posted free on the website.  Matt is the author of a number of scholarly studies of the location of internet related industries, and makes his data available to other researchers through this website. Particularly interesting is data on numbers of domain names by state, with twice annual counts from 1998 through 2001, available at: http://www.zooknic.com/Domains/alpha.html

New Links Added

For October, we offer a potpourri of employment related links, including data on the unemployment insurance systems of the 50 states, the distribution of federal employment throughout the nation, and data on manufacturing employment.

Economic Policy Institute
State UI Fact Sheets
Data and information on individual state unemployment insurance programs, with comparison to national averages.
http://www.epinet.org/Issueguides/unemployment/states/index.html

Unemployment Insurance
Access to various tools and analyses pertaining to state unemployment insurance programs.
http://www.epinet.org/Issueguides/unemployment/index.html

Employment and Training Administration
Unemployment Insurance Program Statistics
Detailed unemployment insurance program data, by state. Data include tax rates, taxable wage bases, revenues, claimants, benefits paid, duration, exhaustions, and balances. Annual data, 1938-98; quarterly, 98-01; monthly, past 12 mos.; weekly, last 6 wks.
http://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/unemploy/finance.asp

Office of Personnel Management
Federal Employment by Geographic Area
Biennial report on federal employment distributions by states, counties, metro areas, U.S. territories, and foreign countries. For the States, counties, and metro areas, employment figures are shown by  major pay systems and by selected Federal agencies.
http://www.opm.gov/feddata/geograph/geograph.htm

FedScope
Criteria-based access to quarterly federal employment data for states, counties, metro areas, with detail available by agency, gender, age, occupation, salary level, grade, and length of service.
http://www.fedscope.opm.gov/index.htm

State Science & Technology Institute
Manufacturing employment and payroll
Manufacturing employment, payroll, and average pay/employee, 2000
http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/032202t.htm