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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…
“Some places attract young singles, whereas others attract married couples and families,” writes Nathan Yau on his data visualization blog, Flowing Data. This is something that I often discuss when I present to audiences around the state: places have age-specific migration profiles that reflect both the reasons why people are moving to a place, and the potential demands that they will have when they get there. Some places, like Mecklenburg County, have net migration profiles…
First celebrated on February 12, 1926, Black History Week was established by American historian Carter G. Woodson to celebrate the contributions to our nation made by people of African descent. For many years, this celebration occurred during the second week of February, coinciding with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. In 1976, the week was expanded into Black History Month. 2.2 million The number of black or African-American North Carolina residents on July…
Within the span of two days, I received two emails asking about the most common sending states for new residents to North Carolina. The most recent inquiry wrote: “What state do most people move from when coming to NC? My guess is NY- or the North East area. Another person I know is insistent that more people move here from Florida.” In this debate, both people are right, depending on how you measure migration. Migration…
In the mid- to late-1800s, four out of every five North Carolina workers was employed in agriculture. Although agriculture and agricultural products remain vital to the state's economy, agricultural employment declined steadily through the late 20th century. At the same time, manufacturing emerged as a dominant employment sector, officially surpassing agriculture as the leading employment sector in North Carolina in 1950. Manufacturing employment in the state was at its highest between 1970 and 1980, and…
Nationally, 2 in 3 individuals 15 and older have ever been married according to the 2013 American Community Survey. In North Carolina, this proportion is slightly higher: 68.2%. The vast majority (71%) of ever married North Carolinians are still married. Another sixteen percent are divorced, four percent are currently separated, and nine percent are widowed. Examining trends by age shows similar trends in North Carolina and the nation. The share of individuals ever married stays…
May 21, 2015 update: The original post defined compliance for U.S. Congressional Districts as within +/-1%. Although the courts require adherence to equal population as much as possible, the maximum potentially accepted deviation cited elsewhere is a total spread of 1%, meaning +/- 0.5%. Following the decennial Census, political districts, such as U.S. Congressional districts and state legislative districts, are redrawn in a process called redistricting. The goal is to make each district as close…
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