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When the Census Bureau releases its annual population estimates, we often focus on counties and metropolitan areas with the largest numerical growth or the fastest growth rates. Yet the majority of counties are not growing. Nationwide, 1,660 of 3,142 counties, or 53%, lost population between April 1, 2010 and July 1, 2014. In North Carolina, 49 of the state’s 100 counties lost population. This is a marked increase over a decade prior. Between 2000 and…
“When the Current Population Survey started collecting migration information in 1948, about one-in-five people moved over a one-year period. Today, that number has fallen to about one in nine.” – David Ihrke, U.S. Census Bureau Moving is a common experience. The average American will move about 12 times in their lifetime. Most of these moves are clustered in young adulthood, as individuals move to go to school, start jobs, and form families. In North Carolina,…
North Carolina had nearly 9 times as many textile machine operators than would be expected based on national averages, according to recent analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Georgia had more than 10 times as many textile machine operators than would be expected. In these two Southern states, the relatively high concentration of these jobs—as compared to national averages—reflects historical economic patterns that persist today. Nationwide, just over 75,000…
North Carolina’s population has grown by more than 408,000 new residents since the 2010 Census. Of these, 95,000 were added between July 1, 2013 and July 1, 2014. New county population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau highlight how counties and metropolitan areas changed over this same time period. In many ways, the 2014 estimates are a continuation of the population trends we saw in the 2013 estimates: metropolitan regions are driving the state’s overall…
The Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly publishes national unemployment rates by educational attainment for the highest degree attained for workers 25 and older. This analysis typically uses the Current Population Survey (CPS) data. Unfortunately, the CPS data are too small to provide high quality estimates for unemployment rates by educational attainment for individual states. Thankfully, there are multiple federal sources of statistical information available. The large sample size of the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual American…
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) regularly releases data summarizing selected school performance measures. The four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate is calculated by dividing the number of regular high school diplomas earned within four-years (“on-time”) by an “adjusted cohort.” The adjusted cohort begins with all individuals who entered 9th grade four years previously. It then adds to this group all individuals who transferred in between Grade 9 and graduation and subtracts students who transferred…
Nearly 4.5 million North Carolinians age 16 and older reported working in the 2013 American Community Survey. Of these, nearly three quarters, or 3.3 million, were of prime working age (25-64) and working full-time (defined here as 30 hours of work per week or more). Women made up 46% of North Carolina’s full-time employed population of prime working age. Although many occupations are increasingly integrated with respect to sex composition, a large number of occupations…
Craft breweries are small, independent, and traditional, according to the definition given by the Brewers Association. This means that they produce fewer than 6 million barrels of beer annually, are not controlled by an alcoholic beverage industry member, and predominantly brew beers that are made with traditional ingredients and flavor profiles. Although overall U.S. beer sales were down 1.9% in 2013, craft beer sales increased by 17.2%, driven in part by a steady increase in…
Colleges and universities can exert significant impacts on the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of community populations. This is often self-evident in “college towns” such as Chapel Hill, where college students make up a large portion of the population. But, as Alemayehu Bishaw notes in a recent report for the U.S. Census Bureau, “even in large cities, a big student population living off-campus can impact [economic] indicators” such as the poverty rate. College students typically live in…
In the past few years, there have been many articles about declining home ownership. Nationally, the March Current Population Survey (CPS) shows that homeownership peaked at 69.2% of households in 2005 and has declined steadily since then. In the most recent data, the U.S. homeownership rate was 64.6% in 2014. This is the lowest homeownership rate since 1995, but not the lowest recorded in this data: 63.6% of U.S. households owned or were in the…
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