research existing work with this data

[derekeder]

@JoeGermuska pointed me to this presentation:

Digging Deeper on Employment: Local Employment Dynamics Data

Paul Overberg, database editor, USA TODAY

Most local business reporting on employment focuses on net numbers because that’s all that has been available until recently. Now reporters can analyze the tremendous churn of workers in and out of new and old firms in various sectors of their local economies using LED data. Learn how to use browser-based tools to analyze and visualize this data for a state or metro audience and how to extract a local slice for more analysis.

Download PowerPoint
Watch video of session

[evz]

@derekeder @hunterowens @matthewgee If you haven't watched the video that Derek linked to above, I recommend it. The parts on the "On the Map" application get into some of the nitty gritty of what can be done with the dataset as we're building it.

[JoeGermuska]

Since I got tagged on this, I wanted to say "hi" so, howdy, folks.

I'm project lead for @censusreporter, which aims to make US Census data easy for journalists. We kind of have our collective hands full with American Community Survey data for the near term, but we also want to help foster a larger community of census data users with open source sensibilities.

If there are smart ways to cooperate, drop me a line or jump in on our (so far very quiet) google group.

[hunterowens]

@JoeGermuska

Thanks for the video link. Working my way through it, but it seems helpful. I'm sort of curious, how has @censusreporter been dealing with the size of the datasets?

[JoeGermuska]

For development, we're loading all the ACS data into Postgres. It works well to a point (states in the nation, counties in a state) and works, albeit groaningly, for all block groups in a state or larger geography. (You can actually use our PSQL database easily in AWS, see @iandees' blog post )

We're ready to denormalize data and "prebake" components, but for now, using PSQL is a nice blend of flexible and performant.

[evz]

Here's the app that the Census Bureau built to explore this data:

http://onthemap.ces.census.gov

[derekeder]

This Forbes viz of American Migration patterns came to mind as inspiration: http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2011/migration.html

Shows people moving from county to county over years (turn the lines off to get a better sense)