San Marcos (or anywhere else) on American Factfnder

U.S. Census Breakdown on San Marcos demographic and economic information

This page starts you off with demographics, but there's tons of economic data on the left side of the screen. I think it's the single best source of information for this kind of information.

Of course, you can change your county, city, zip code and more geographic parameters to search for other locations. 

Helping You Analyze Simply Map And Other Economic Demographic Data

Enrico Moretti's The New Geography Of Jobs can help you understand the significance of demographic and economic data like you would find a database like Simply Map.

With all the different variables out there, how can you predict the future based on the data and what data should you be looking for?  What is the significance of some of these numbers?

You'll find what to look for - the type of work, size of firms (this matters), nature of those industries, and more interesting ideas that you can use as an analytical tools. Some types of workers and industries can retool very quickly or take on new kinds of work.  Obviously this leads to much greater economic successful transitions.  The opposite is true in some cases, which leads to less successful transition and stagnation.

You'll be able to predict how a city might react to an economic transformation or what the future might hold for the city. 

This work seems to build very much on the conceptual ideas by Jane Jacobs in this book here.

Data Planet and dataZoa Make Big Data Easy

It's the age of big data.  And learning to make attractive graphs and charts for presentations as an important job skill.

But data planet and dataZoa make it easy for you.  These databases allow you to easily import data from several different sources and easily make charts and graphs.  True, there's a way to do this in Microsoft Excel but it is much easier in these two databases.

Data-Planet Statistical Datasets

dataZoa

More Data Cuts - US Might Stop Tracking a Measure of Inflation

From the article: "The Labor Department is weighing cuts to a program tracking import and export prices, a cost-saving move that could alter major gauges of U.S. inflation and economic output, according to people familiar with the matter."

CIA World Factbook and Ranked Lists

Ever use the CIA World Factbook?

Look up data like purchasing power parity, growth, per capita GDP, investment, inflation, credit, etc... by individual country or generate lists of rankings.

The link to get rankings is here. Select economy and scroll down.

Apartment Rents in San Marcos (or elsewhere)

The US Census Factfinder can break down the distribution of monthly apartment rents for you as well by city or zip code. For example, find the distribution of rents in San Marcos here.

You have to scroll down a fair amount of text and then you'll see it.

RAND Database

RAND Database has a lot of economic statistics about the state of Texas. I've used it to find average wages by industry and the state, exports out of Texas's ports, average prices of various products, bankruptcies and more,

There's also farm data in there like the value and changing inventory of crops, as well as net income and a lot more things.

In addition, there is a lot of information about health, demographics, traffic, pollution, quality of life, the environment and crime - among many other variables.

Getting Economic Statistics While The Govt is Shut Down

Perhaps you’ve heard that the government is closed right now.  If you go to statistical websites such as the bureau of economic analysis or the census, you’ll be told that the site is currently not operating.
Well, there’s a work around for this that will probably get you 98% of the data that you need.

There's FRED – the Federal Reserve’s online stats service.  Only data published in the last few days won’t be available 

Also: GDP, employment, military expenditures, research and development, wages, industry composition, the environment, capital investment, and many more statistics can be found in:

Marketline
Passport

The video, while organized around the concept of international statistics works just fine for the United States.

Interest Rates on FRED

Decades worth of domestic US interest rates here.

Categories

Automobile Loan Rates (2) Bankers Acceptance Rate (5) Certificates of Deposit (21) Commercial Paper (25) Corporate Bonds (150) Credit Card Loan Rates (2) Eurodollar Deposits (9) FRB Rates - discount, fed funds, primary credit (21) Interest Checking Accounts (3) Interest Rate Swaps (24)

LIBOR Rates (150) Long-Term Securities (6) Money Market Accounts (3) Mortgage Rates (8) Personal Loan Rates (1) Prime Bank Loan Rate (4) Treasury Bills (21) Treasury Constant Maturity (48) Treasury Inflation-Indexed Securities (140)

Disability and Structural Unemployment

Great NPR article that discusses what we all know: getting on disability is a great way to hide older, unskilled, or industrial workers from the unemployment stats. 

Article doesn't criticize the people - it discusses this as a symptom of a larger problem: the hidden decline of America.

Facts and figures abound.

Historic Statistics for United States

This is a great place to find decades worth of interesting statistics on things you didn't think they collected statistics on.

You have the usual suspects of GDP and employment, but also off-beat items like food consumption, credit worth, suicide rates, busiest airports, number of foodstores, fish imports/exports and so on.

The Datapedia book is in the reference section. The e-version is here.

Shadow Stats: The Alternate to Official Statistics

Here's a great way to uncover some of the -ahem- controversial methodology behind our official government numbers. The alleged motivation? A desire to beguile the masses, lower government payouts to social security (which is tied to inflation) and good old fashioned naivety.

Blogging cult favorite John Williams has a website that shows his reasoning about revising the official figures of inflation and unemployment (among other things).

Read about Mr. Williams and decide for yourself.

There is no shortage of critics of John Williams (just look around). Here's blogging legend Mish discussing Williams's GDP methodology.

History of Correlation

Hey marketers and statisticians!

Interesting article - "Thirteen ways to Look At the Correlation Coefficient" - breaks down the nuances of correlation. Very good summary of how your choice of the construction of your correlation can mean different things in your final scatterplot graph.

Detailed but cool summary of the mysteries of correlation.

Wealth in America

Here are some interesting statistics from da gummit.

These are the people with the benjamins, ducats, dough, and dinero.

The statistics measure the form the wealth takes (income or stocks for example), what states have the most wealthy people and how much money that is, and family net worth at the top.

2010 Beige Book Release Calendar

The Federal Reserve published the Beige Book - rather anecdotal accounts of current economic activity that is released a few times a year.

According to the Federal Reserve website:

"Each Federal Reserve Bank gathers anecdotal information on current economic conditions in its District through reports from Bank and Branch directors and interviews with key business contacts, economists, market experts, and other sources."

This is the schedule to the different 2010 Beige Book releases.

Congressional Budget Office Analyzes Government Policies

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is a well regarded research arm of the legislative branch of government. Over the years, it has earned a fairly good reputation for thoughtful, non-partisan research.

I suggest you look here for some excellent analyses of pending bills and their impact on taxes, fiscal policy, money, and the larger economic picture.

Cap and trade, the stimulus package, raising or lowering taxes, trade policy, etc... all get the policy wonk treatment here.

New Beige Book is Out

The Fed Reserve has released its current edition of the Beige Book. Editions come out eight times a year. The actual title is Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions.

This is the book that summarizes current economic conditions in different areas of the country. It's a little general in content, but it's often referred to by economic commentators.

Federal Reserve Websites Are A Good Source of Information

One interesting place to find economic data and thought pieces with an economic slant are the websites of the Federal Reserve regional banks. I've learned about Texas exports, infrastructure, economic dimensions of social policy and of course, the housing crisis.

So there's always a lot about forecasting and analysis of current conditions on these sites, but also some interesting, learned papers about various topics. Keep your eyes peeled for economists writing about cutting edge issues that haven't received a lot of information yet.