What's New — May 2001

The New EconData Top Ten

A drum-roll please. There's been a lot of change on the web in the past two years, since we first chose EconData's top ten websites for regional socioeconomic data. When we started out, we counted only a little more than 100 topical websites; today we list over 600. Choosing the top ten keeps getting harder.

But with the help of our loyal users and based on our own careful review of the best of the best, we've come up with our new top ten list. You'll find some old favorites, and new upstarts. Even though many of our listings are veteran sites, nobody remained on the top ten list by standing still. All our classic sites have made major technological changes to make finding the data you need easier.

Without further ado, and in no particular order, here are the EconData.Net top ten websites for regional socioeconomic data.

-Bureau of the Census. The largest of the big three federal statistical agencies is an obvious choice for the ten best. While you might want to find your way around the Site using Census' encyclopedic alphabetical listing of contents, more and more, we recommend that users go directly to the American Fact Finder, which is increasingly used to provide access to all the major Census data series:
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/BasicFactsServlet

-Bureau of Labor Statistics. BLS provides a wealth of information on employment and wages, and while it once took enormous patience to find the data you needed, BLS may be one of the most improved websites on the top ten list. We especially like their new "Economy at a Glance" page for getting an integrated set of BLS data by state and metro area.
http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.map.htm

-Bureau of Economic Analysis. BEA's extensive time series data and comprehensive income accounts are a vital tool for regional analysts. BEA continues to make major improvements to their website:
http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/regional/reis/

-Dismal Scientist. Who says there isn't a free lunch. Dismal Scientist excels at generating current cross-sectional state and metro rankings from a variety of data sources. We recommend EconData users go straight to the regional analysis page:
http://www.dismal.com/regions/regions.stm

-GeoStat. The Geospatial and Statistical Data Center at the University of Virginia is an excellent guide to a variety of federal data series, with a easy to use interface for selecting and downloading data. If you're starting out, and want one site with a similar approach to disparate data series, go here:
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/active_data/index.html

-RECON. The Regional Conditions page produced by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is one of the handiest web-pages we've seen for quickly finding and charting regional economic data. You'll find access to employment, financial and real estate data for states, counties and metropolitan areas. Very easy to use.
http://www2.fdic.gov/recon/

-FedStats. The federal government produces a cornucopia of data, and while much of what the government does is highly de-centralized, your best one-stop guide to federal statistics is FedStats, which offers an alphabetic listing of federal data, clickable maps for state and local data profiles, and a directory of federal data-producing agencies.
http://www.fedstats.gov/

-State of The Cities. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has worked with other federal statistical agencies to produce special data runs on a number of economic performance indicators for central cities and their suburbs. Their report on the State of the Cities is excellent, but data hounds will find the companion website a tremendous resource for quickly getting comparative data on metro economies.
http://socds.huduser.org/index.html

-Economagic. Economagic continues to do its special bit of magic: quickly generating time-series charts of state, county and metro employment data, and providing easy access to a wide range of other data as well.
http://www.econmagic.com

-The Association of University Business and Economic Researchers is one of those organizations we suggest everybody get to know. Your local AUBER member is often an insightful observer and invaluable resource on your regional economy. Every state has its own experts and specialized data collections. The fastest way to find them is AUBER's state-by-state directory of resources, at:
http://www.auber.org/htmls/leapcomp.html


Site of the Month: SBA Economic Statistics and Research


A perennial question in policy debates is the role of new and rapidly growing smaller businesses in the creation of new jobs. Most published economic statistics don't allow researchers to easily analyze growth trends by industry size class. One comprehensive source of such data for states and metropolitan areas is the SBA Economic Statistics and Research page. Here you'll find Excel spreadsheets with detailed data on employment and sales by firm size class and major industry category through 1997. Visit:
http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/


A New Source for Housing Prices

Housing prices are a key economic indicator of regional economic health and performance. Housing prices are also the major source of inter-regional variations in the cost of living. A new, extremely comprehensive regional housing price index has been compiled by an obscure federal agency, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Using same-house sales data, OFHEO compiles its own indices of state, regional and national housing prices, and provides a wealth of information on its methodology. Visit:
http://www.ofheo.gov/house/download.htm

New Links Added

A flurry of analyses have recently become available on the changing racial and ethnic composition of the US population, and its geographic distribution. You can chart the trends in metropolitan segregation from a variety of sources. This months new links include:

-Racial Segregation in the 2000 Census
The Brookings Institution
Analysis of racial segregation in 291 metro areas, using Census 2000 data.
http://www.brookings.edu/es/urban/census/glaeser.pdf

-Lewis Mumford Center, SUNY-Albany
Analysis of race and ethnicity data from 1990 and 2000 Census measuring extent of integration and segregation for 331 metro areas.
Data available for central cities, suburbs, and full metro areas.
http://mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/segdata.htm

The Mumford Center has also produced rankings of 331 metro areas in terms of racial and ethnic integration and segregation.
http://mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/sort/

-School of Policy, Planning and Development, University of Southern California
Data on prevalence and distribution of multiracial respondents to Census 2000, by state.
http://www.usc.edu/schools/sppd/research/race_census

We've also added in data on social capital:
-Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University
For 39 regions, scores and discussion regarding the presence of 11 dimensions of social capital, for example, civic leadership, association
involvement, social trust, and inter-racial trust:
http://www.cfsv.org/communitysurvey/

EconData named RefDesk's Site of the Day

RefDesk, Bob Drudge's tightly-packed encyclopedic guide to all kinds of facts and figures on the Internet, named EconData.Net its Site of the Day last month. RefDesk does for general Internet resources what EconData tries to do for regional economic data: give you a well-organized subject listing of the best resources available. Thanks, Bob! You'll find RefDesk at:
www.refdesk.com