NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 1
NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE
April 21, 2021 12:30 pm CT
Coordinator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time all participants are on a listen-only mode until the question and answer session of today’s conference. At that time to ask a question press Star 1 on your phone and record your name at the prompt.
This call is being recorded. If you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to the Earlene Dowell. Thank you. You may begin.
Earlene Dowell: Thank you Alyssa and thank you to Anthony Eremitaggio from the Census Bureau for hosting our Webinar. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us for our April LED Webinar.
Before I introduce our presenter I am thrilled to invite all of you to the 2021 Local Employment Dynamics Partnership Virtual Workshop next Friday, April 30ht. This year’s theme is New Horizons Charting the Course with Data. We will be highlighting the work of our state labor market information partners and other data users through plenary sessions. Please visit our Web site at lehd.ces.census.gov for more information.
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On behalf of the US Census Bureau and the Local Employment Dynamics Partnership in Collaboration with the Council for Community and Economic Research and the Labor Market Information Institute it is my pleasure to welcome back my friend and colleague Andrew Hait, as he presents Improving Access to Key Census Data. What’s New on COVID Data Hub and Census Business Builder.
The Census Bureau conducts more than 130 monthly quarterly annual and periodic surveys each and every year, and continuing to improve access to the data from these programs is key. This Webinar will provide an update on the latest changes to the COVID-19 Interactive Data Hub, a platform the presents Census Bureau and other data related to COVID-19 map pandemic.
The Webinar will also cover what was new in Version 3.3 on the Census Business Builder and what is coming in the 3.4 release in May. The Census Business Builder continues to be a trusted resource for entrepreneurs and economic development groups and includes selected data from the LED quarterly workforce indicators.
Andrew Hait or Andy as many know him as, is an Economist and serves as the data product and data user liaison in the Economic Management Division at the US Census Bureau. With over 30 years of service at the bureau Andy advises on economic data products and conducts data user training and outreach for the economic census and Census Bureau’s other economic survey programs.
He also is the lead designer and coordinates development of the Census Business Builder. Andy holds a Bachelor’s Degree in economics from Syracuse University and has a Masters Certificate and Project Manager from George Washington University. With that I welcome Andy. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 3
Andy Hait: Great. Thank you so much Earlene for the wonderful introduction. So again my name is Andy Hait. I usually - I’m only called Andrew when I’m in trouble so Andy is perfectly fine. And today we are going to actually be exploring two of the many data tools we have at Census Bureau.
As Earlene pointed out, we publish a lot of data at Census more than 130 monthly, quarterly annual and periodic programs. And for many of you on the call today accessing those data is easy. You all are what we would typically think of as power users and accessing the comprehensive information that we have available in these tools and platforms like data.census.gov and in other sorts of resources we have like the Census Bureau Data API is something that is easy for you. You are regularly users of Census Bureau data, you understand the way our data are organized and you can actually find the information you need fairly quickly.
But I will say that the audience that I’m speaking to today is in many ways atypical of a lot of the users that we have at the Census Bureau. Many people are familiar with the Census Bureau only because they know the we count the US population every ten years. They know - some of them know that we do annual demographic programs and some may even have heard of something called the ACS the American Community Survey.
But the vast majority I think of our users are users that are not really familiar with the Census Bureau. They are not Census Bureau data nerds nor are they really statistically savvy and accessing these tools, this data can be really challenging. So over the years we have done a lot to try to improve access to data to an audience that really needs to in many ways have their hands held.
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Today I’m going to be talking about just two of these data programs, these tools. The first one I’m going to talk about is called the COVID-19 Interactive Data Hub. I’m going to walk through some of the key features of that application, the site sort of why we created it, what’s included in it. And I’m going to talk a little bit about what’s coming in future releases of the COVID Hub.
Just as the coronavirus pandemic has evolved over time so has the COVID-19 Data Hub. And I want to make a plug right now I will say it again later that the feedback that we have received from users has been instrumental in determining what information we put on the COVID-19 Data Hub.
So if you think you haven’t been heard, if you have feedback that you’d like to provide on what you see today both with the COVID Hub and Census Business Builder please, please, please let us know. We really, really, really do listen and we want to hear your feedback.
So after I do the presentation about the COVID Hub and then I’m going to talk about a tool that is near and dear to my heart, Census Business Builder. As Earlene pointed out I am the project lead for this data tool. I've been involved in this project since its birth. I think of it in some ways as my child.
And I’m going to talk a little bit about what was added in the latest version, Version 3.3, and I’m going to do a demo of Census Business Builder for you. And then I’m going to give you a preview of what’s coming in Version 3.4 and finally we'll do some questions.
So to start off let's talk about the COVID-19 Data Hub. As the Census Bureau was beginning to enter the COVID-19 pandemic we realized that we could play a really important role in providing statistics, data, that emergency NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 5
managers that health department officials, that a wide variety of users could use to help them understand how the pandemic might spread across their states, their counties and their communities.
We also knew that we were going to need to do some special surveys at the Census Bureau, surveys that don’t just provide information on what the potential impacts of the pandemic are but actual programs that provide data on the actual impacts.
And in the beginning of the pandemic we thought, well let’s just release the data in those different programs on those individual program pages and just tell the users if you want to get demographic data about your community go here. If you want to get data on small businesses and how they’ve been impacted go there.
But we realized that for this particular audience that simply was not going to work. So the result is the COVID-19 Interactive Data Hub what you're seeing on your screen right now, screenshots of.
The hub has a number of major components. At the very top of the COVID-19 Interactive Data Hub is something that we call the Impact Planning Report. This is a two-page data dashboard that provides interactive access to selected statistics from four of our Census Bureau programs.
Most of the data are from the American Community Survey, provides information on things like age, population 65 and over, provides information on poverty status and various different categories of at-risk populations. We also have some business data in this particular planning report, this dashboard from our county business pattern and non-employer statistics programs that NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 6 provide information on employer and non-employer businesses and even some data from the economic census.
This Impact Planning Report has evolved a lot over the life the one year that the platform has been live. Over on the right-hand side you may not be able to quite see it but you can - you may notice that we just recently updated this Impact Planning Report to add in new information on occupation.
As the pandemic was spreading we knew that certain populations were more at risk to catch COVID than others so the demographic data was really important. But as we are now entering vaccine distribution and recovery phase for the pandemic knowing something about the occupations of people that live in a particular area could be really important.
We know for example that in most states healthcare workers were getting early access to the pandemic. So providing information on healthcare occupations is included now in the Impact Planning Report. This was literally just added a week or two ago.
Just to let you know I’m kind of monitoring the chat as we're going, yes of course we are going to be posting not only the recording in the transcript for this Webinar today but as well as these slides themselves, the PowerPoint slides. So no, you don’t have to frantically write down these URLs.
Below the Impact Planning Report we then have links to the eight programs that were actually stood up at the Census Bureau specifically to help measure the actual impacts of the pandemic, six of them, actually specifically two that existed beforehand.
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At the very top of this list of COVID-19 surveys and estimates is our business formation statistics. This provides information on startups, so what we typically think of as startups. There's information from both our weekly Small Business Pulse Survey and our month, and our Weekly Household Pulse Survey.
We have information from a really fantastic program that hopefully you all are already familiar with called Community Resilience Estimates. This program provides information at the tract level on just how resilient or not census tracts are to the coronavirus pandemic, providing information on the population that is subject to no risk factors, one risk factor, two risk factors or three or more risk factors.
We also just recently added to this list of programs two new programs. One is our selected multi-state sales tax collection. We knew that not only were people and businesses being impacted but so were state governments because of their reduction in their state sales tax collections. So there's now monthly data available from this particular platform using either links to those program pages, the go to links or actually by having their own specific dashboards built right into this platform.
Many of you are familiar with the Monthly Retail Sales Economic Indicator Survey. We recently added a monthly state retail sales breakout. So this now provides retail sales information not just at the national level, like the Monthly Retail Trade Survey does provide but at the state level. We know for example that certain states are being impacted more than others when it comes to their retail economy.
After these COVID-19 surveys and estimates there’s been something that we call policy maps. These are interactive maps containing selected statistics that NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 8
are shown in the dashboard above. Some of them are available at the state and county level.
This one is actually looking at the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index or SVI. And as you can see, I have been able to actually drill down to specific census tracts. This is Onondaga County where Syracuse's University is located, my alma mater as Earlene pointed out.
One of the most exciting - well pause a second. In addition to providing the data in interactive dashboards and policy maps we also knew a lot of people, probably a lot of you were going to want to actually just simply download this data. You’re going to want to pull it down into your own platforms to include it in your own dashboards, in your own policy maps -- things like that.
So we had provided two resources that allow you to download some selected highlighted data sets and the full set of all categorical data sets that are available in the COVID Hub. One thing I want to point out about these downloadable resources is they are downloadable not only as a CSV and as an Excel file but for those of you who are GIS professionals or have GIS professionals who work in your offices you can down load these data as a Shapefile as an actual data layer and bring it right into ArcGIS and include the information in your own platforms so we thought that was really important.
Now one of the most exciting changes I think that has happened to the Hub since it went live occurred in January of this year. We have been having conversations with our colleagues at FEMA and they told us that they had been curating a pile of data sets from across the federal statistical agencies and a lot of other third-party data providers on the Argonne National Labs Web site.
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Now some of you are probably familiar with ANL. You probably know that ANL is a fairly limited access government only resource. So making this data accessible to a larger audience was something that FEMA was really thinking about, would this not be a good thing.
So they approached the Census Bureau and they said, "Would you guys be willing to provide links to these data sets that would allow users to access not only your census data from your COVID hub but also these other data sets?" And as you can see from the slide we said yes.
On the left-hand side it is the first portion of this page where it lists the different providers of data. You can see it includes a mixture of federal agencies like BEA and BLS and Small Business Administration as well as some third-party data providers like Womply, Google, et cetera.
I’m especially proud of the fact that we do have private sector data here because we know that a lot of private sector data providers are doing some really interesting things with data. And again the tip I want to mention to you all is in using this resource if there are data that you’re aware of that are not currently available on the hub and you think that we should add them please let me know.
My email address is going to be at the very last slide of today’s presentation. So this will give you access to the 38 different data sets across the federal statistical and private-sector data providers.
The links that are available from these tiles on the right-hand side bring you to that Programs page and yes that does mean that the structure and content and format of the data that you’re going to get from BEA might look very different from the formats that are available in BLS. We know some users NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 10
have commented that is they’re not one standard way of releasing data? of course the answer is no. But we are actually thinking about some ways that we could actually update this resource to start to incorporate some of this data more sort of merged in with the Census Bureau data.
The last update that we made to the hub is the addition of a new section called Data Equities Tools. These are for programs, access to four programs that allow you to provide information about the equitable distribution of resources and identifying underserved communities that we need to really sort of target these resources to.
This was on the - was requested for us from the Department of Commerce. And we went ahead and added it. As you can see we have the Community Resilience Estimates program here as well but we’ve also added our ROAM tool, the Response Outreach Area Mapper the tool that we use to identify communities that may be needed some special handling during the 2020 population census, the Opportunity Atlas and of course Earlene's favorite, we have links to on the map for emergency management and some of the other LEHD data tools.
So lots going on with the hub. But there are other things that we are going to be working on in the future releases in Version 2.3 and beyond of the hub. Of course we are going to be doing the usual updates of data. For all of these surveys that are being updated weekly and monthly we pull the data, the day that it's released and it is incorporated immediately in the COVID Hub. ESRI is actually doing that work for us which has been fantastic.
We have also received some feedback about some of the business data we have and we are working on some updates to that business data from County NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 11
Business Patterns, the Non-employer Business Program and the Economic Census.
I already mentioned updating the ACS data variables to show the occupation breakout. It’s likely that we'll be making some other updates to the platform to reflect additional ACS data the people have asked for. And finally we're going to be adding some additional links to some other Census Bureau programs that we think will be very useful during this recovery phase if you will of the COVID-19 pandemic.
So that summarizes the COVID-19 interactive data hub. I’d like to now change gears and talk about Census Business Builder. CBB exists for a number of reasons. As Earlene pointed out we have a lot of surveys but users have very little or no awareness of them.
Many of these users need data to drive their decisions and census data that’s available to them for free can be really useful. But in order for them to be able to use that data, that free data they need to be able to access it. And while we have dozens of incredibly powerful tools, these tools aren't always very easy for census newbies to use. That’s why we built CBB.
In addition, when users access those programs often they are faced with a fire hydrant approach of data. The American Community Survey for example provides over 3000 different estimates. Sometimes users want all 3000 estimates. But many times they really just need some selected statistics. So providing those statistics in Census Business Builder is really important.
We also recognize that not only is data from Census Bureau useful to people, but data from other providers are as well. So as you’ll see in just a moment NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 12
CBB includes data not only from the Census Bureau but from other providers as well and you’ll see that in just a moment.
And finally we know that CBB is sort of the "Gateway drug." It is the tool that users use first to access some selected statistics and then as their needs grow, as they become more advanced Census Bureau data users, CBB can actually act as a bridge to those users to help them access the more detailed data that it is likely they may or probably will need later.
Now CBB has two versions, two editions. At the very top is something called the Small Business Edition. This edition was created specifically for entrepreneurs and small business owners that may be completing the business loan, doing a business plan and they need some basic information about their customers, their competitors, their suppliers that they can incorporated into their business plan.
The second addition which is the addition I’m actually going to demonstrate for you all today is called the Regional Analyst Edition. This addition was created initially for users for chambers of commerce. Chambers care about more than just simply a single type of business at a time which is the way the Small Business Edition works.
Let’s say I wanted to open a restaurant in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. I could choose restaurants, Anne Arundel County and CBB Small Business Edition would pull together for me the data as well. But chambers care about all of the businesses that are in their service area. They want to understand the complete complexity how many of the businesses in their communities are manufacturers are retailers, are wholesale businesses, et cetera. So CBB RAE provides access to the full set of industries that we publish at census, not just one at a time. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 13
Secondly Chambers of Commerce often represent more than a single county or a single geography. There are many regional chambers of commerce that may represent two or three or ten counties. So the ability to be able to create custom geographies made up of one or more Census Bureau published geographies like counties is a key feature of the Regional Analyst Edition.
I have provided a link to the CBB now and I’ve included a few screenshot slides here in the presentation so for you all to refer back to later. But I’m going to quickly jump out live and actually show you CBB Live. So if we go to our main Census Bureau Web site and choose Census Business Builder from our list of available data tools you will come to this page.
This page includes flyers and fact sheets about how to use CBB, but it also includes the two links to the two additions. So let’s say I want to know something about the economy of Central Maryland and I want to focus on Anne Arundel County and some of the surrounding counties.
When I click on the Regional Analyst Edition link, I come to this page where I can choose the area that I’m interested in researching. I’m going to look at Onondaga County, I’m going to go and choose Onondaga County New York. And the application is now going to zoom in on this particular county and is going to present to me a couple of key statistics. The default statistic is population. We can see in the dashboard that the population of Anne Arundel, excuse me, of Onondaga County is 462,872.
Now some of you who are familiar with CBB are noticing something right away. Andy what is the second little box over here in the dashboard? Looking at the selected map or this menu, what is the second option over here not selected? NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 14
Well a lot of users over the years have said, "Andy it’s really nice to be able to view one data variable at a time on the map but it would be even better, even more useful if you would let me look at two variables or maybe someday multi-variables, multiple variables."
In Version 3.2 of Census Business Builder we actually added the bivariate mapping feature. So if I know select this second variable that says Not Selected and I now let’s say go in and choose household income as my statistic I can now view two variables on the map at the same time.
The base map is the one that shows the first variable, total population. And now these little circles, these graduated circles tell me what the household income in this case is. So in Onondaga County the median household income is 82,569.
In CBB I can click around on the map and change and look at data from neighboring counties. So in Cayuga County we can see that the household income than the population is a little bit less. And if we then look just to the north of Syracuse in Oswego County we can see the population is again kind of a little bit around the same amount as Syracuse as Onondaga County.
Now some of you may be cringing at this really pretty colorful map. Other ones of you may be saying, "Oh, I really like that colorful map." Yes of course CBB does give you the ability to customize the color palette on the map. So if you are annoyed by this really colorful map I can go ahead and change the map color to a more traditional dark to light fade so now we can see that Onondaga County has actually one of the higher populations in this area 118,000, 229,000 in Onieda County and that these later shaded counties like NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 15
Lewis County are much smaller so a more traditional color palette used in this tool.
So that was one of the first changes that we made. You will also notice that CBB provides data not only at the state level but at the county, city, ZIP Code and even census tract levels. So let’s say I wanted to look at population by ZIP Code on this map.
And I’m going to be a little bit brave here today because it’s a lot of ZIP Codes that are going to be displayed. But what now is happening is the map is now repopulating itself showing me ZIP Code level data. And we can do this all the way down as census tract. I’m not going to be quite that brave. I normally recommend people to zoom in on the geography they’re interested in before they select census tracts.
Now I’m going to go back out to county and I’m going to show you a few other features that are available in this tool. In the Small Business Edition I can look at a single industry and a single geography at a time. But as I mentioned in the Regional Analyst Edition we knew that if people are going to want to build regional chambers, the boundaries of regional chambers.
So let’s say I want to create a region of Onondaga County and all the counties that rated. The way I can do that is by clicking on the Edit Region Feature. I can then go ahead and say I want to draw a rectangle, a circle, a polygon or upload a Shapefile or I can just quite simply click on each of the geographies that I want to add to my region.
Let’s do Oswego County and I can do that one at a time. Let’s go ahead and add a second one over here, what is it Madison County. Then let’s go add one to the bottom. CBB will allow you to build a region of up to 25 geographies. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 16
And I will say that that 25 is based upon the limitations of the length of the URL in Microsoft Internet Explorer and in Edge.
If you try to build a region with more than 25 geographies the length of the URL keeps growing and growing and growing and eventually it grows so much that it actually exceeds the length of the maximum length of the URL in Microsoft browser products.
However if you were building a region in Chrome or in Firefox where we don’t have a limit there essentially is no limit to this. So I’ve now selected all of these counties. I’m not going to say I want to name it so let’s just call this region Syracuse area. And once I am done editing it's now going to outline that entire area.
And what I can now do is I can create a region level report that summarizes all of the data that’s in Census Business Builder. And you’ll see those data variables in just a moment for all of the counties that I just selected.
Now one thing I want to mention is I built this region of just counties. But let’s say I wanted to build a region of Onondaga County and each of the cities that ring Onondaga County, not the entire county, just some of the neighboring cities.
The Regional Analyst Edition does allow you to does allow you to actually build a custom region of a combination of states, counties, cities and ZIP Codes and/or tracts. So it will allow me to build that custom geography.
You do need to remember that the data that has been shown in that region level report which we'll see in just a moment is going to be dependent upon NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 17 the programs they provide that level of data. So mostly if you build things on ZIP Codes and tracts you're mostly just going to see the demographic data.
But CBB provides more than 170 different data variables. So when we go to the map variables menu we can look at demographic data like population, age, race and ethnicity information. We can look at some socioeconomic data like household education, household income, educational obtainment, disability status.
We can look at housing statistics like owner versus rent or occupied housing units, house values, owner costs -- things like that. These statistics and under this customers or consumers area is all from the American Community Survey.
We also have business data. So the business data most employer businesses and non-employers from our county business patterns, non-employer statistics and the Economic Census Program.
Now I made a point of saying earlier that the Census Bureau recognizes that sometimes our data really are most useful when they are merged with data from other providers. So we’ve actually - included the Bureau of Labor Statistics quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data, the QCEW data in Census Business Builder specifically because they have wages data which is something that we don’t publish in our County Business Patterns Program or the Economic Census. We have annual payroll but not wages.
Now of course Earlene would not have invited me to an LED focused presentation Webinar series if we didn't include the Quarterly Workforce Indicators data in CBB as well. So yes we do include that. And you will notice throughout these menus that there's these little arrows next to it. So we NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 18
published data on the beginning of quarter employment but we also then have it broken out by worker age. So if I wanted to look at the employment of workers in a particular sector in Cuyaga County New York I could choose the different age breakouts that we have in this tool.
We have only included a small subset of the QWI data in the CBB. But I will tell you that adding the QWI data has been one of the most popular things that has happened in the CBB as well as the QCEW data.
Now this next categories are building permits data. Many of you know that Census conducts a monthly survey on new residential building permits. We’ve included the building permits data in here as well.
And then finally the last two tabs, this one here consumer spending, this is data on consumer expenditures that ESRI provides to their consumers, to their customers. We purchased a piece of this consumer spending data from ESRI. We’ve incorporated it into the tool and its available to you all for free.
And finally, the last tab is one that honestly almost got me fired for blasphemy at the Census Bureau. This tool allows you to upload your own data in to CBB. So let’s say you have some information that you have compiled from a particular source and you want to overlay your data that you have with Census Bureau data and do some kind of comparisons looking at what, you know, the things that are available.
You can actually upload "your data" using the My Variables feature. You absolutely are not physically uploading it anywhere. All you’re doing it is momentarily creating a connection between your computer and our cloud server, this census. This application is hosted on AWS West. And as long as you are in CBB, that connection is maintained. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 19
The minute you leave Census Business Builder the connection is severed and that connection is only visible to you. So just to kind of give you an example of what’s available.
Now we’ve built this custom region and you may be saying, "Wow, this is really kind of cool. I really like of this. Andy, could you go back over to that ZIP Code level data, and let’s say I want to find only those ZIP Codes in this region that I just built that have certain characteristics. Okay I want to find only those ZIP Codes that have certain things, that have data on a certain population of the area of the population that has a bachelor’s degree or higher or some other characteristics. How can I do that in CBB?"
So the way you can do that is by using this filter. And you can see I jinxed myself a little bit here in trying to be brave and showing ZIP Code level data. This is a cloud hosted application. So sometimes it can be a little bit slow but it’s also pulling an awful lot of data. So I'm going to go ahead and clear out my average income as my second variable just to make it a little simpler.
So the way the filter works is I click on of filter and let’s say I want to find all of those ZIP Codes on this map that have a household income greater than $50,000 a year. Let’s just pretend that that’s what my characteristic is.
I chose household income. I then am presented with a range. On this map the household income range is between 20,000 and 222,000 okay? I don’t want that full range. I just want 50,000 or more. I could enter the values in manually. So let’s say 50,000 is my characteristic that I want.
And when I click on Apply Filter now only those ZIP Codes that qualify are going to be displayed. So all those ZIP Codes that whose household income is NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 20
less than $50,000 are now grayed out. So you can see there's a few over here to the east of our region. There's one ZIP Code right over in here that has a lower household income.
And I can go back and I can adjust that household income. Let’s say I want to make it a little bit higher. Let’s make that $75,000 instead of $50,000, do that. Go ahead and change that. When I then apply that filter now we're going to see some additional geographies drop out. So we have this now with this cluster.
I can do up to six different variables in this filter. And once I have them filtered that I can then download all of the ZIP Codes that qualify using the Map Download feature and we can break it down as a CSV or Excel or even as a Shapefile.
There’s a few other features in the tool. I’m not going to get a chance to really show you all but I would encourage you all to check this out because we think we’re pretty proud on what we did with this particular tool. I’m going to go ahead and clear my filter that I added just so we can see the whole map again. Let’s close that to bring everything back. I’m going to go back county level data.
The last couple of points I want to make is okay you’ve done all this great work in Census Business Builder. What can I do with all of this? If I copy this URL and send it to a colleague when they click on it, it will bring them right back to the map exactly where I have left them zoom level and everything set. And that same bookmarking feature also works for the reports.
So if I have created this really cool report of that five-county area in and around the city of Syracuse, I can now go ahead, copy this particular URL and NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 21 send that URL to a colleague. And when they click on it it’ll then bring them right back to this report exactly where they left.
So this is, we think, a pretty interesting application, allows you to go in and do some really kind of amazing things. Let me get back out to my PowerPoint file and let’s talk about some things that are coming in the future.
So I’ve already told you about the addition of the bivariate mapping feature that was added in CBB 3.3 and talked about some of those new features that are available there. We talked about the map page and the different reports that are available. So let’s now kind of tease you a little bit about what else is coming in the future.
In our next release which is version CBB 3.4 which is coming out at the end of May we will be continuing to update the quarterly data that is in the tools. So that includes the QCEW data from BLS and the Quarterly Workforce Indicators data will be updated.
For any of the programs that we have annual data for that are then released before that release for example, County Business Patterns is coming out later on this week, we will be updating that data as well.
We have also had requests from users over the years to add additional data. We are finally going to be adding in some data on the public, sector state and local governments. That’s going to be added to CBB. And eventually when the Decennial Census data start to come out we will be of course adding Decennial Census data to Census Business Builder.
The data variables that are in CBB from the ACS have grown the most of any data program that we have. When we first released the initial prototype of NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 22
Census Business Builder we had four American Community Survey variables in the tool. We now have about 80.
We know that people would really like to potentially see other ones so please, please, please let me know if there are data variables that you use all the time from the ACS that you didn’t see in Census Business Builder. We want to go ahead and add them.
And we are also finally thinking about adding some data from other Census Bureau programs. We’ve had some questions about could we add some of those COVID related programs to CBB? I’m not quite sure I really want to do that for a variety of reasons but that is something we could talk about.
Now there's are some really exciting new functionality that I’m giving you a total sneak peek for what’s coming out in May. We over the years have had questions about being able to look at more than one industry at a time. The Department of Commerce has a cluster mapping tool that pre-designs for you pre-defines industry clusters into related industries. For example they have a tourism cluster that then looks at Commerce Department data including Census Bureau data aggregated for all of the industries that they define as being engaged in or involved in tourism.
But the challenge with that particular tool is they’ve decided someone has decided what the definition of tourism is, what are the specific NAICs codes that are related to tourism.
And when they did so they recognized that that definition may not be the same definition across the whole United States. In some states or in some metropolitan areas or counties certain industries may be considered involved in tourism where they may not be in another neighboring county or maybe NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 23 there’s some industries that typically are thought of as engaged in tourism that that particular user says, "No I don’t count that part of tourism."
We are actually adding an industry cluster tool the Census Business Builder, that will allow you to define your own industry cluster by choosing your own industries, whatever industry you want to do fine as involved in that cluster. It’ll work in a similar way as that Region Building Tool that I just showed you works. I’ll be able to choose two or more industries and it will then build a total of the number of establishments, employment, payroll, hires the other statistics that we have in Census Business Builder for that industry cluster.
Now I will tell you ahead of time we are doing very, very little validation on the industry that the user selects. You will not be able to choose an industry that is a child of another industry. So let’s say I chose a particular four digit NAICS code the tool would not let me choose one of the five digit NAICS codes within the four digit because I'll be double counting the data.
So there is some controls, but for the most part you can define whatever industry cluster you want. We are not validating your definition nor are we officially saying that is a Census Bureau recognized officially validated industry cluster it is totally up to you. I’m really curious to see what LED users think of this industry cluster feature because I think this is something that will be especially popular with this particular audience.
We are also going to be adding another level of geography to Census Business Builder. In that Geography Levels menu you saw that we support state, county, city, ZIP code and tract level data. But over the years we’ve had questions about adding metropolitan areas. We are doing it.
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In adopting this and incorporating these metros we are going to be showing metropolitan statistical areas and micropolitan statistical areas but we are not going to be showing right now any of the other types of metros the census publishes data for nor the non-metro data, so counties that are not in a metropolitan area.
The - so when you look at the map you’re going to see a patchwork. You’re going to see some areas that we have metros defined and then other errors even in major metropolitan areas like Washington DC Metro area you will see counties that are not in the metro area. I would love to hear some of the feedback from you guys on those nonmetros.
And then finally the last new functionality we're adding is the ability to create your own data variable where you will be able to take two or more data variables and perhaps add them together. So let me give you an example.
Let’s say we have in Census Business Builder the population, the number of people that are between, that are under 18, that are 18 and under. And then we have 19 to 24 and then 25 to 45. And let’s say I want to create a total of those three age brackets because I want to count the zero to the 45 people.
This tool will allow you to actually add up those variables and create your own calculated data variable. We’re still working on some rules of what you can and can’t do with building that but we will actually see how that works.
And then finally the last point I want to make again, I’ve made it already is we want to hear back from you. I know already the people who started using the bivariate mapping feature have said, "Andy I really like this but," and that they give me a long list of buts, of, "I wish you could do this or you could do that, please, please, please let us know." NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 25
So to summarize we hopefully think that you think the CBB is a pretty good tool to help raise awareness of some of the data that we have at census so people don’t keep going away thinking that all census does is called the US population every ten years.
We recognize that business owners need high quality data and we hope that say CBB presents these data to users, to business owners to help satisfy that need so that they are making data-driven decisions. We know we look at business failure rate, that one of the reasons why businesses often fail because they didn’t do their homework. Is opening a certain business and a certain area a good idea? Census has data that could help guide that decision. We hope that they use the tool and CBB to do that.
We know that buying access to that is important and presenting the right information, what are those key statistics that business owners need that are so critical to them? So again plead for you to provide some feedback on this if the data that we have matches what you need or if there’s some things that we're missing.
And again we want users to start their exploration of Census data with Census Business Builder but then use those other data tools like data.census.gov to really kind of dig more into the weeds.
So with that I am done. Here is my email address and phone number. And certainly if you have any questions that you want to ask me personally after today’s Webinar please feel free to contact me at my email address or phone number.
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But operator we are all set to start taking some questions. And again we'll take them via the phone for those few of you who have called in on the phone today and we will also address some of the questions that have come in in the chat. I didn’t see that there’s been a whole bunch of questions that came in the chat so let’s go ahead and see if we have any questions.
Coordinator: Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. If you’d like to ask a question please press Star 1 on your touch-tone phone, make sure your phone is on mute and record your name clearly when prompted. Your name will be required to introduce your question. If you need to withdraw your question you may press Star 2.
Again to ask a question please press Star 1 and record your name. We'll take a moment for questions to come through. Please stand by.
Earlene Dowell: And while we wait for the questions to queue up I would like to ask that everybody please be courteous and keep your questions pertaining to the presentation with one follow-up question. And also we’ve received a few questions regarding the presentation which will be accessible on the census academy web site in a week or two at census.gov/academy under the Webinars tab.
And finally also an evaluation will be mailed to you following this Webinar. We would appreciate if you took the time to fill this short survey out so that we may be - we may better serve you. And I just wanted to put out one question that did come in in the chat that several people asked regarding the COVID Hub. "What is the lowest geography?"
Andy Hait: Yes, so that is a very, very common question Earlene. Currently the most detailed level data that we have in the COVID-19 Data Hub is Census Tracts. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 27
And that data is available from the community resilience estimates and one or two other data products.
Most of the data in the hub is at the state and county level because most of those programs like the Small Business Pulse Survey and the Household Pulse Survey are only available down to the nation and state level and sometimes counties.
We have had some requests to incorporate some more of the American Community Survey data down to the census tract levels. One of the questions I did see was about whether or not we would even consider going down to block level.
Short answer no, we haven’t considered block because for right now the most recent block level data we would have would be from the 2010 Decennial Census. Now once 2020 block data are available then perhaps we could incorporate that. But we already have and comments from users about the challenges of understanding census tracts and knowing which tract is the one that they should be caring about.
The users know what ZIP Code they live in but they often have no idea what tract they are in so blocks get in the weeds even more. So really - a really good question definitely something we’ve been thinking a lot about on this Hub.
Earlene Dowell: Operator are there any questions on the line?
Coordinator: I show no questions through the phone at this time but again it is Star 1 if you’d like to ask a question.
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Earlene Dowell: Great. So I have a list. "So Andy can you clarify the raw data source?"
Andy Hait: Raw data source from what?
Earlene Dowell: I would think it was COVID Hub.
Andy Hait: Right. So the different programs that feed the COVID Hub are from a variety of programs. So in the Impact Planning Report we have data from the American Community Survey come from County Business Patterns, non- employer statistics and the Economic Census and that’s pretty much the same programs that provide data for the for those policy maps.
The individual census programs, COVID programs like Small Business Pulse Survey, Household Pulse Survey obviously that program that that comes from, those are all specific surveys. And throughout the hub we have links to those program pages where you can look - read about the methodology of that survey. How did we actually conduct a weekly household pulse survey during the pandemic?
It is quite fascinating reading. I will admit I'm a bit of a data nerd so I found it really interesting to understand how they actually conducted a survey, what the response rates were, et cetera. It's just sort of amazing thing that we’ve done at the Census Bureau. But yes those programs are all specifically in there. Hopefully that answered the question.
Earlene Dowell: "I have a Tableau public and I noticed that some others census resources are downloadable at Tableau Workbooks. However the Weekly Business Formation dashboard and some of the other small business resources are grayed out as an option for download via Tableau. Are these not downloadable?" NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 29
Andy Hait: Yes so great question. Right now in the Hub the three formats that are currently supported are CSV, Excel and DataLayer. They’ll bring it down into a GIS.
We have not incorporated downloading that data as a Tableau workbook primarily because Tableau workbooks can so easily for Tableau users at least be pulled in from CSV or Excel file formats. But I think if we get a significant numbers of users who are interested in us presenting that data specifically in Tableau format in workbooks we may end up doing that.
There is some challenge I guess will say in picking a particular platform like Tableau but we’ve done that with Excel, so people are accepting of the fact that we are promoting a particular company’s spreadsheet application. But yes that's a great question. We have to see if there's a real demand for that.
Earlene Dowell: Okay. "And I haven’t tried other agencies data but it would be nice to have F- I-Ps codes, FIPs codes to see - FIPs codes so we can merge several data sets or even to the ACS data."
Andy Hait: Yes. So you’ll be happy to hear that in the downloadable file formats we have instances Business Builder and in the COVID-19 Hub that I talked about today when you download the data you will actually get not only the FIPs state and county and place and all the other FIPs volume codes but we will also provide for you the GEO ID which is essentially a consolidated version of each of those codes mashed up together.
The GEO IDs are valuable because if you want to then merge our Census Bureau data with the Census Bureau’s TIGER/Line files those actual, NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 30
Shapefiles the GEO ID is consistent across those two different platforms and that can be your link between the shape itself and the data.
Earlene Dowell: Okay. And I see that there’s a question on the phone.
Coordinator: Yes. The question comes from Dion Lewis Duke. Your line is open.
(Dion Lewis Duke): Yes is there a specific URL for businesses international exporting data?
Andy Hait: So okay, I’m going to try to restate. You're asking do we publish data on domestic businesses that export? Is that what you’re asking?
(Dion Lewis Duke): Yes.
Andy Hait: Right. So the short answer is yes. Census does publish - well first of all Census publishes a lot of different trade data, monthly data on imports and exports. And there are some…
((Crosstalk))
Andy Hait: …special report that’s part of our trade programs that have information on US manufacturers that export. The Department of Commerce through their International Trade Administration, ITA also has some really good resources on US businesses that are engaged in importing and exporting. And I would really encourage you to check out there.
It’s probably more for more than I can talk about in just this one conference today…
(Dion Lewis Duke): Yes. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 31
Andy Hait: …so go ahead and send me an email and we can chat about the different resources that are available for you.
(Dion Lewis Duke): Okay. Thanks a lot.
Andy Hait: Yes. You’re welcome.
Earlene Dowell: (Allyssa) are there any more calls on the phone?
Coordinator: I show no questions on the phone at this time.
Earlene Dowell: Okay I have a couple more. "Where are the - why are there so many different data sets available? How do we consolidate data sets so there can be a one- stop shop for consumers to use?"
Andy Hait: Yes so what you are describing (Amy) is the Holy Grail for many users of the Census Bureau data. We conduct over 130 different programs that are released in dozens if not hundreds of individual data sets. And consolidating the data across those programs can be challenging.
It is one of the reasons why we built Census Business Builder. If I went in and selected the data for a particular county and I generated that report would then have demographic data, socioeconomic, housing data, business data, trade data, agriculture data. There's a variety of other statistics that are in that report. And I can then download the data from that report in Census Business Builder and it puts all that data together into one Excel workbook.
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So we’ve tried to do exactly what you’re asking for, consolidating those different data sets so it’s sort of one-stop shop as you’re asking for. But even in doing what we’ve done with CBB it still is just scratching the surface.
The goal of our data.census.gov Enterprise Summation Platform someday is to be that one consolidated resource that people can go to to access all of the data at the Census Bureau. That is probably not going to happen before I retire at - from the Census Bureau. And even when it does you’re still going to have different data sets that the data are released in because there’s so many different caveats and other things about the data.
Industry classification codes apply to our business data but they don’t apply to our household demographic data. So having one consolidated data set that has demographic and business data together is almost an impossibility. But there's a lot that we can do to make consolidating those data sets easier. It’s just a hard thing to do. We are a pretty nerdy statistical agency and it's just a lot to deal with.
Earlene Dowell: And Andy…
Andy Hait: Great question.
Earlene Dowell: ...here is another question. "The Household Pulse Survey data table there are visualizations that are not in Tableau but only Excel files are downloadable. Can you produce those downloadable TWBX files also? I like the visualizations but don’t have time to reproduce all of them from Excel. Thanks."
Andy Hait: Right, right. Then that’s sort of that same sort of question is making this data available not only as an Excel file format in downloadable format but also in NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 33
Tableau workbooks. Yes I'm glad that you asked on that (Jason). I will definitely pass that along to some of our developers to see if that’s something else that we can incorporate.
Earlene Dowell: And here's another question. "What’s the typical response rate to the Census Bureau’s weekly/monthly survey?"
Andy Hait: Yes so the response rate varies widely across our different programs. For the Economic Census for 2017 we had an 82% response rate, so pretty high response rate. In many of our other business surveys we aim for 70% as sort of our norm.
During the COVID pandemic we had to make the decision to accept in some respects people would say, except less than what we normally would because the data they came from the programs was so valuable that having something was better than having nothing. So in many of these very, very timely surveys like Household Pulse and Small Business Pulse we're seeing response rates less than 30%.
And there’s certainly are some challenges when you’re dealing with a really timely survey like that and have a fairly low for us response rate. But what I would point out to folks when you think about that kind of response rate is that if you really dig into the weeds from a lot of other data providers out there, trade associations that conduct their own surveys for example 30% is usually actually considered a pretty good response rate. That would normally put us into cardiac arrest but we realize that we needed to do something to provide this kind of data.
So yes it’s – we’ve not seen the responses that we were hoping for but we still think that the data is quite valuable. And honestly some of those lower NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 34
response rates are having an impact on our ability to publish data at lower levels of geography.
Most of our pulse surveys are available only at the national and state levels. The household pulse does go down to the top 50 metropolitan areas in the United States. But if we had higher response of course then it's likely that we might be able to publish more detailed geography.
We are also pretty good at the Census Bureau with openly and honestly publishing those margins of error and those response rates. So we want to let people know, "Hey, you know, the data is what the data is what it is," so great question.
Earlene Dowell: I have one kudos. It says, "Good heavens. This is sweet. I hate that I haven’t been aware of this until now, love it," all caps.
All right, "So there was an option for key ratios under businesses?"
Andy Hait: Yes.
Earlene Dowell: "Are they key ratios commonly used in business analysis or something else?"
Andy Hait: Yes. So the short answer is yes they are. And so what we included in Census Business Builder under that key ratios is things like average annual payroll per employee. So we published payroll data and we publish number of employees. That’s just simply the ratio of payroll per employee.
We have payroll per dollar of - or excuse me, sales per dollar of payroll. We have revenue per employee. We have revenue per establishment so there's a number of those key ratios that could be very useful to businesses to compare NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 35
the productivity for example, of their workers and how much they’re paying their workers to other businesses like them. That’s exactly why we added those key ratios.
Earlene Dowell: All righty, "And can we filter out the number of vaccinated residents by ZIP Code?"
Andy Hait: So the short answer is yes. The slightly longer answer is if you have a data set that has information on vaccination rates, the number of people that are vaccinated by ZIP Code, so if you have a data set that has vaccinations by ZIP Code, you could upload that data into Census Business Builder using that data upload feature and you could then use the filter feature in CBB to filter out the – those ZIP Codes based upon whatever criteria you'd want to filter on.
So let’s say I want to find all the ZIP Codes that have a high poverty rate. So I want to look for ZIP Codes that have high poverty rate and I then want to look at what are the vaccination numbers for those ZIP Codes. That is definitely something that you could do using the Upload feature and the Filter feature in CBB.
We do not though have data on number of vaccinations but they are as you probably heard dozens of times on the news, many organizations including John Hopkins University that provide really fabulous information on COVID infections, hospitalizations, vaccination rates, et cetera. So yes it’s, you can definitely use CBB to do that filtering. You just need the data to filter.
Earlene Dowell: "When uploading my variables is there a format or keys sequence for linking to map and their demographics?"
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Andy Hait: Yes. So when you try to use the upload feature there is a link to a document that describes what the structure and contents of your uploaded file needs to look like. It’s actually quite simple. The requirements are pretty minimal so that it will match up to the map that we display in CBB.
And we even have a sample file. So if you wanted to take a look at a particular sample and then mock up your data to match that sample that is available right inside Census Business Builder and it’s on the CBB homepage, that first Web site that I showed you where you can go ahead and read about, you know, flyers and fact sheets about Census Business Builder.
Earlene Dowell: "Can you access historical data in CBB to do cross-sectional analysis?"
Andy Hait: Yes. So you might have noticed in the dashboard itself and in some of the charts that are available to report, we do have some time series data. So for example from the Quarterly Workforce Indicators we have four quarters of data, actually I think five quarters of data.
For the American Community Survey we have two non-overlapping five year estimate ranges. So we have two periods there. County Business Patterns we have five years of data. And yes you could certainly use that time series information that's in the CBB to be able to do some sort of analysis looking for geographies that have certain characteristics industries that are growing at a certain amount -- things like that.
The time series data is really there in CBB more for a point of reference so that when I’m looking at the current period data I can get a sense for is that number good or bad? How does that number compare overtime?
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We have the time series comparison chart and we have a geographic comparison chart that will allow you to compare let’s say the ratio of payroll for employment for the county that you have selected to the state and to nation to determine is the payroll per employment - per employee in this industry in this county higher than or lower than or the same as the state average and the nation average? So we do have some of that information in there specifically to do that kind of work.
Earlene Dowell: Okay and since we're over our time, but we have three more questions one of the questions is, I believe farms are missing from most/all of data sources included. Are there any plans to incorporate farm data I assume from AG department?
Andy Hait: Yes. So great question (Ryan). We do actually already have some data from the US Department of Agriculture. Their National Agricultural Statistics Service from the census agriculture is already incorporated in Census Business Builder. We specifically added that because a lot of chambers were saying census publishes data on the nonfarm private sector economy but I would like to add in the farm economy because in my area of the country farms are really important. So we actually pulled in some data from the Census agriculture from USDA maps into CBB.
There are some programs at Census that have some data on NAICs 11 which is the sector that includes agriculture. But the pieces - the programs that do include that typically exclude 111 which is animal production and 112 which is crop production or I may have them reversed. We only cover basically agricultural support services, fishing and hunting at the Census Bureau, not what we typically think of as farms because USDA does. But yes we did include a bit of it in CBB specifically for the reason that I mentioned.
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Earlene Dowell: Okay and then one question is a request and one question is a question, so I’m going to read the question first. "Will my Census Bureau experience be notably enhanced by having ArcGIS?"
Andy Hait: So the short answer is in theory no, you should not need to have ArcGIS to be able to use Census Bureau data in the tools that we provide for you. However I will say that having ArcGIS and being an experienced GIS user will allow you to do some things with Census Bureau data that maybe we haven’t done or haven’t done quite to the way that you would want to do it.
For example ArcGIS and the whole GIS application through ESRI the ArcGIS online, allows you to do some really, really cool things with mapping and building things like story maps. We don’t utilize story maps at the Census Bureau at all. I have been asking for our folks to allow us to use story maps at Census for at least five years. And so being able to pull that data and create your own story map about your particular community merging our data with your GIS experience would definitely help enhance the usability of census data. But in theory you should not need to use ArcGIS to access anything from census.
Earlene Dowell: Okay in the last one was a request so if you could - the request is to show the slide concerning equity again.
Andy Hait: Right. So we're probably talking about this slide here that shows information on data equity tools. As some of you probably know, the president has recently issued a directive if you will, that requires communities and areas to make data-driven decisions based upon equity that when they are distributing public resources they need to do so in an equitable kind of a way and they want to make sure that they serve not only the well served, already well served communities but also underserved communities. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 39
So to do that, to do an equitable distribution of resources and to identify underserved community means finding what are those communities that are under served, what are those communities that have challenges with them that would make them potentially more eligible to receive those resources than other communities?
So CRE, Community Resilience Estimates provides information on communities that are more or less resilient to the COVID-19 pandemic. Communities that are shown in darker colors are the ones that have more of their population subject to three or more risk factors. Communities that are in later colors are those that have less that are perhaps more resilient. So this tool could be very useful to do that.
ROAM was specifically designed to help us conduct up the population census knowing that a particular community may be less likely to want to fill out an electronic survey form and may need something in paper to fill out their Census form for 2010 for 2020 in paper. ROAM provides that kind information so again identifying those hard to survey areas.
The Opportunity Atlas provides tract level data on children’s outcomes so again identifying underserved communities so that we have an equitable distribution of resources. The Opportunity Atlas is a great tool to provide that.
And of course LEHD has a variety of programs and data sources that provide information about jobs, workers and local economies that again could be really useful in helping make sure that we serve communities equitably. This is a brand-new part of the COVID Hub that was just added. So it's still in its infancy but we still have a lot of work to do on it. But we think that this is a good start, first step in the right direction. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE 04-21-21/12:30 pm CT Confirmation # 2081695 Page 40
Earlene Dowell: Okay, well thank you so much. So thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon and thank you to those who hung in there after the time. Also thank you to Andy for his outstanding presentation.
The LED Webinar series will continue again on May 19, 2021 at 1:30 Eastern Daylight Time when Robert Manduca presents the Spatial Structure of US Metropolitan Employment, New Insights from LODES Data. Also don’t forget the 2021 LED Partnership Virtual Workshop on April 30. Visit L-E-H- D.C-E-S.census.gov for more information. And thank you for spending your afternoon with us and have a wonderful day.
Coordinator: Thank you. That concludes today’s conference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect at this time.
END