Participation trends in the last two general election cycles are positive. More of us are registering, and more importantly, more of us are voting, though still at different rates depending on who we are demographically and economically. The Census Bureau released, just this week, data detailing a national level comparison in voting in the [...]
As noted recently, we all love a good index, especially when the index aggregates a bunch of different data into "buckets" that make more intuitive sense. And it helps when indices have been "around for a while". In data geek parlance, "around for a while" translates to: 'serve as a longitudinal dataset to allow [...]
The unemployment story is getting better recently -- for all age groups. That's to say, the unemployment rates are lower across the board. But they aren't better equally for everyone. Rates are highest for the 16 to 24 age group, which were up to 20 percent nationally at the height of the recession and [...]
As of Monday, we're just one year out from Census 2020, and even if you're not a demographer or data wonk, we promise it's kind of a big deal. Here's why: It's critical for political representation. If you care about who represents you in Congress, and how much representation you get, then the census update matters [...]
Everybody loves to rank stuff. The NCAA just seeded teams 1-68 for March Madness, for instance (and, incidentally, may your bracket hopes live long and prosper). But oftentimes rankings neither are useful for comparing things nor predictive of results. Creating an index— AKA, building a composite ranking system — can give much better results, [...]
This week's Friday Factday is the last post in our three-part series visualizing Occupational Employment Survey (OES) data for 2017 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In our first post post using the OES data, we provided an interactive tool for comparing occupations by total employment, median annual wages, and the prevalence of regional employment in [...]
In this Friday Factday, we are taking another look at the Occupational Employment Survey (OES) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In a previous post using the OES data, we provided an interactive tool for comparing occupations by total employment, median annual wages, and the prevalence of regional employment in each occupation to [...]
Today, the first day of winter, is recognized annually as National Homeless Persons Remembrance Day. Sponsored since 1990 by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, this day of recognition is intended to bring attention to the nation's homeless population and to encourage action for their [...]
The Opportunity Zones Program, enacted in 2017 as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, is designed to encourage long-term investment in economically distressed rural and urban neighborhoods across the country. Opportunity Zones are census tracts that have been nominated by governors and certified by the U.S. Department of the Treasury to receive [...]
