Advanced Fact Finder Eric Guthrie Brookings SD June

Advanced Fact. Finder Eric Guthrie Brookings, SD June 12, 2014

Today’s Session • Understand what datasets are available • Understand what is available at different geography levels • How to search for and find data at very small geography levels

There are Many Datasets Available • • Decennial Census Annual Survey of State government Tax Collections American Community Survey Commodity Flow Survey Economic Census Population Estimates And several others

The Datasets We Use Most • Decennial Census (SF 1 and SF 2) o Enumerated data that is collected and released every 10 years o The “Gold Standard” for population and housing counts • American Community Survey (ACS) o Survey Data collected on an ongoing basis, and released every year o 1, 3 and 5 year estimates available, based on the population size • County Business Patterns o Yearly Data Available at the county level

The Census and the ACS • The Data collected for these datasets used to be collected at the same time, one time, every ten years. • The last time this was the case was in 2000. • Now these are separate datasets where the Census collects basic population and housing counts and the ACS provides data that communities need to make various decision. o Things like economic and social characteristics

The Big Differences • The ACS is a survey and the Census is an enumeration. • The ACS is collected and released on an ongoing basis. • The Census is collected and released every ten

County Business Patterns • Released yearly at the national, state and county levels. • Number of establishments by industry • Number of workers in the various industries • The payrolls of the various industries

Topics • Let’s take some time to look at the topics available

Select and See How It Restrict Geography

Limiting Factors • Datasets • Topics • Geographies If you cannot find what you are looking for, especially if you know it is there, it is probably because you have selected something that makes the data unavailable.

Getting Data • When getting data, this is why we tell you to select your geographies first, because it is the most limiting factor. • The presumption with this is that you know what you are looking for and at what level it is available.

Lowest Levels Available • Census (Population and housing distributions) o Available to the block level • ACS o Census tract, Place, or Minor Civil Division • County Business Patterns o County

Finding Data at the Smallest Level • The best way is with GIS Software • Missouri Site can help too • Census Tract and block maps are there as well.

Finding a single block or small group • Site to find blocks provided by the Wall Street Journal http: //censusmapmaker. com/ Stat Tract e Count Block y

Finding Tracts • The NY Times provides this site which is helpful at the tract level: http: //projects. nytimes. com/census/2010/explorer

Missouri is also very helpful • This allows you to find all tracts around a point: http: //mcdc. missouri. edu/websas/caps 10 c. html

Go get some data • Look for the block or group of blocks on which you live or work. Find the population for that area

Where to Get Definitions • I cannot stress enough the value of this site for understanding the, sometimes, cryptic census terminology http: //www. census. gov/main/www/glossary. html

What are Your Data Challenges? • Where have you run into areas that you need some help with? o Finding Data? o Locations? o Subjects?

Thank You! Questions?