Economic Data & Analysis

What are we Trying to do?

What are we trying to do?

• Export goods and services• Import money• Circulate money internally

Planning Intelligence for Economy

• Many sources of data– U.S. Census– U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics– Bureau of Economic Analysis– N.C. Employment Securities Commission

Planning Intelligence for Economy

• U.S. Census– County Business Patterns (Annual)– Economic Census (Every 5 years)• Census• Commodity flow survey

• Bureau of Labor Statistics (Dept. of Labor)• Bureau of Economic Analysis (Dept. of

Commerce)

Planning Intelligence for Economy

• State of North Carolina– NCESC• Alternate at bls for MSAs

– NC Department of Revenue• Research and data

Doing Intelligence

• Need some indicators of economic activity– Example, WNC Economic Index• Current Indicators

– Employment– Unemployment Rate

• Leading Indicators– Building Permits (Residential)– Initial Claims for Unemployment

• Creation of a tracking “index”– Actual number is meaningless– Trend of number is meaningful

Doing Intelligence

• Descriptive information– Sectoral (disaggregate)– Employment (aggregate)

• Analytical information– Multipliers– Location Quotients– Shift/Share Analysis

Employment Multipliers

• Total Employment / Export Employment• A multiplier tells us how many jobs are

created (or lost) when we attract (or lose) employment in our community

• Easy to identify total employment– What about “export” employment?

Percent Export = 11

LQ

100

The Location Quotient

• Identifying “export” sectors• Comparing shares of local employment by

sector with a “self-sufficient” economy– Usually, national economy– Can use other levels in hierarchy, but

interpretations change

Location Quotient

• Let’s go to the spreadsheet & page 10 of handout…

Location Quotient = % of Local Emp. in Sector X

% of National Emp. in Sector X

Shift-Share Analysis

• Measures firm efficiency / competitiveness

• Three parts to shift/share– National Growth Component (NG)– Industrial Mix Component (IM)– Competitive Share Component (CS)

Shift-Share

• National Growth Component– Assumes local economic growth at national pace– Estimate of how many local jobs were created

merely to national trends (assuming they are similar in nature)

• Multiply base year local employment (by sector), by the national growth rate

Shift-Share

• Industrial Mix Component• Indicates whether a specific sector is growing

faster (+) or slower (-) national total employment

• Multiply local employment in each sector by:– Difference in sector growth rate & total growth

rate for the nation

Shift-Share

• Competitive Share Component• Determines if local sectors are more

competitive (=) than similar national sectors

• Multiply local sector employment by– Difference in local sector growth rate & national

sector growth rate

• Let’s go to spreadsheet…

• ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS

• The following abbreviations and symbols are used with County Business Patterns data:

• – Represents zero (page image/print only)• D Withheld to avoid disclosing data of individual companies; data are included in higher level totals• S Withheld to avoid releasing data that do not meet publication standards; data are included in broader

industry totals.• X Not applicable• a 0 to 19 employees• b 20 to 99 employees• c 100 to 249 employees• e 250 to 499 employees• f 500 to 999 employees• g 1,000 to 2,499 employees• h 2,500 to 4,999 employees• i 5,000 to 9,999 employees• j 10,000 to 24,999 employees• k 25,000 to 49,999 employees• l 50,000 to 99,999 employees• m 100,000 employees or more