The controversy over union benefits in Wisconsin has brought great attention to the public service sector there and across the nation. Social Explorer can help you learn about the different sectors of the workforce and how they have changed over time.
The Census tracks data on employment, including sector (such as private, public, self-employed, nonprofit and unpaid home workers). Using Social Explorer we can track public sector workers in Wisconsin and nationwide.
A 2005-09 American Community Survey map shows details of where public service reside.
The following tables based on Social Explorer reports provide the number of people in the public service sector across the decades.
For instance, the US has added over 8 million public service employees to the workforce since 1970. But, overall, the public service sector shrank 1.5% over the past forty years and now represents 14.6% of the labor force according to the 2005-09 American Community Survey.
In Wisconsin, public service workers make up 12.2% of the state’s labor force, a decline of 1.9% during the same time period. You can explore this data and more with Social Explorer’s maps and reports.
If you’re looking for a Valentine, let Social Explorer help you map your way to love. Cupid crunches the numbers to make the most of his arrows, and you should too.
You can look up nationwide information on the 55.6 million available men and 63.5 million available women, or take a lesson from “The Situation,” and analyze the ratio of single women to single men to plan your next night out.
You can use tables like the 2005-09 American Community Survey’s “Sex By Marital Status By Age For The Population 15 Years And Over” to hone in on where your future honey may (or may not) dwell.
Check out Social Explorer’s maps and reports for more information on singles. It’s not just a coincidence that “data” is just one letter away from “date.” And you will be sure to impress with a demographics-related pickup line.
This Sunday, the Green Bay Packers face off against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV.
As fans enjoy nachos, cheers and cheese hats for the big dance, Social Explorer is prepping game day demographic data. Instead of the NFL, we’re the NDL (National Data League), and we’re bringing you AFC fans American Football Calculations.
To predict how this first-time Super Bowl matchup might do, let’s take a look at the teams’ home cities in 2009. Since the teams both won in the late 1990s (Steelers in 1996, Packers in 1997), we’ll also look to the 1990 and 2000 census numbers.
As the data reveal, the more populous Pittsburgh has always had over three times as many potential local fans as Green Bay, but Pittsburgh has seen a much steeper population decline during the past two decades. Similarly, we can trace the maximum number of gameday gatherings (and corresponding nachos and cheers estimates) by looking at the number of occupied homes.
Both team names were inspired by the manufacturing sector–the prominent Pittsburgh steel industry for the Steelers, and the meat-canning Indian Packing Company for the Packers. As shown, the manufacturing sector has declined in both cities. Green Bay has a larger portion of its workforce in the manufacturing industry (three times as much), but it has also seen a larger decline over the past two decades. (2005-09 American Community Survey data offer detailed industry and occupation information.)
This Sunday, crunch some numbers with Social Explorer while you enjoy your Super Bowl snacks because no Super Bowl party is complete without a big bowl of data.
As the Census Bureau releases the state-by-state 2010 data over the next few weeks, the New York Times will be relying on Social Explorer data and expertise to help tell the stories of the numbers.
Today, the New York Times covered the scope of population shifts after the devastating 2005 hurricane in “Smaller New Orleans After Katrina, Census Shows.” The Times cited Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge in its findings that:
The city has roughly 24,000 fewer white residents than it did 10 years ago, though the proportion of the white population has grown to 30 percent.
The city has 118,000 fewer black residents. New Orleans, once more than two-thirds black, is now less than 60 percent black.
There are 56,193 fewer children, a drop of nearly 44 percent.
St. Tammany Parish, a suburban refuge for many New Orleanians after the storm, grew by nearly a quarter.
St. Bernard Parish, which is downriver from the city and was almost completely overwhelmed by the floodwaters, shrank by nearly half.
The Hispanic population of neighboring Jefferson Parish, home to many of those who came to fill the city’s ravenous appetite for construction labor, jumped by 65 percent.
In the last decade, the white population declined, while Hispanic and Asian populations grew the most. The Black population shrank in some areas, like East Orange, in grew in others, like Union City.
Accompanying maps developed with Social Explorer data illustrate racial and ethnic population patterns, as well as the boom in vacant homes.
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Watch the New York Times and our blog for more demographic and map features as the official 2010 Census data rolls out.
The New York Times explores interracial marriage trends in Susan Saulny’s article “Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above.” An array of illustrative graphics feature Social Explorer data on interracial marriage rates across different racial and ethnic groups.
Nearly 9 percent of all marriages in the United States in 2009 were interracial or interethnic, more than double the percentage in 1980. The rates of intermarriage vary widely depending on gender, race or ethnicity. Gender differences are most pronounced among blacks and Asians. Black men marry someone from a different group twice as often as black women do, while among Asians, the gender pattern is reversed. Over all, black Hispanics and American Indians have the highest rates of intermarriage. For Asians and white Hispanics, the rates of intermarriage have remained static or decreased.
This past weekend, Social Explorer attended the National Conference of States Legislatures (NCSL) Redistricting Seminar in DC. The two and a half day event brought together legislators, lawyers and redistricting enthusiasts of all kinds to participate in panel discussions and hands-on exercises.
As Nathan Gonzalez wrote in Roll Call, “Some of the most powerful people you’ve never heard of are coming to the Washington, D.C., area this week, and their legacy will last at least a decade…The NCSL seminar marks a final step before the hypothetical maps and strategies move to the reality of the parties drawing new maps in each state.”
The American Community Survey (ACS) was one of the valuable redistricting resources discussed at the conference. The 2005-09 ACS offers recent data and a count of the Citizen Voting Age Population (CVAP)–useful when considering how to draw district lines. Earlier this month, Social Explorer made this wealth of ACS demographic data available to users.
Social Explorer users can quickly and easily access the same data tools that the professionals redistricters use.
A new article on Remapping Debate examines persistent racial segregation in the US. The story “Mapping and analysis of new data documents still-segregated America,” explores the realities of racial segregation in neighborhoods across the nation. Working with tools provided by Social Explorer, Remapping Debate released interactive maps that can zoom down to the Census Block Group level anywhere in the US, showing the high concentration of segregated neighborhoods.
Social Explorer segregation map from Remapping Debate
(red areas are 0% African American and gray areas are more than 50% African American)
Social Explorer map showing segregation along Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn, NY
Remapping Debate analysis of 2005-09 American Community Survey data found that:
In a country that is only 12.1 percent African-American, 30 percent of African-Americans live in Census Block Groups that are 75 percent African-American or more.
75 percent of African-Americans in the country live in only 16 percent of the Census Block Groups in the United States.
50 percent of African-Americans live in Census Block Groups that have a combined African-American and Latino population of 66.85 percent or more (nationally, the latino population is approximately 15.8 percent, so the combined African-American and Latino population is just shy of only 28 percent).
On New Years Eve, Social Explorer reflects on a year of 2.9 million maps created by over 100,000 users. Looking to 2011, we resolve to fatten up with new data and tools. Here’s the exciting new data diet we’re sticking to:
1. The entire release of the American Community Survey 2005-09 (coming early January).
2. A tool that automatically adjusts Cost of Living for any year since 1913, and makes it possible to compare things like income distribution from year to year.
3. Release of the 2010 Census Redistricting Data state-by-state as it becomes available (starting with New Jersey and Virginia in February).
4. The ability to overlay Social Explorer on top of Google maps and switch seamlessly between them.
5. Interactive tools to view data on the map interface.
6. An embed code generator to help you share maps and reports on blogs and other websites.
7. A tool that will automatically report change over time, taking into account shifts in the data or geography.
On Thanksgiving, Social Explorer is taking a look at the site of the first famous feast—Plymouth County, MA. Here, as legend has it, pilgrims from England and local Wampanoag Indians first dined together in 1621.
Whether “Civilized Indians,” “Half-breeds,” “American Indians” or absent, Social Explorer can give you insight into how the census counted and categorized Native Americans over the decades.
Historical demographic data reveal that Native Americans were not counted for the first 60 years of the census. The constitutional language that mandates the census specifically excludes “Indians not taxed” from the count.
Indians not in tribal relations, whether full-bloods or half-breeds, who are found mingled with the white population, residing in white families, engaged as servants or laborers, or living in huts or wigwams on the outskirts of towns or settlements are to be regarded as a part of the ordinary population of the country for the constitutional purpose of the apportionment of Representatives among the States, and are to be embraced in the enumeration.
Starting in 1860, the census collected data on Native Americans, but it did not always report it fully or consistently. According to census data from 1860, there were 43,562 of these so-called “Civilized Indians” (plus 459 “Half-breeds”), accounting for 0.1% of the population. (Ten years later, 24 “Civilized Indians” appear in the Plymouth County data.)
In 1960, the Census reported “Indians” separately again and found 142 in Plymouth County and 523,591 nationwide. Just ten years later, the “Indian” race data disappeared from common census reports once again.
While hidden in the census, Native American terminology hit the top of the billboard charts with the song “Half-breed.”
A 1973 Number One Hit
Cher sings “The Indians said I was white by law/The White Man always called me Indian Squaw.”
Meanwhile, in 1970, the Census would have reported a woman struggling with “Half-breed” identity as either “White” or “Other.”
Did the Census Bureau’s 1970 omission of “Indian” inspire Cher’s “Half-breed”? Did Cher’s song prompt the Census Bureau to reintroduce Native American race data?
A few years after the song, the Native American race category returned to the census under the new more detailed option of “American Indian/Eskimo/Aleut.” With the addition of the ability to specify multiple races starting with the 2000 census, demographic information on Native American populations has become much more complete, with more detailed information on mixed-race individuals and tribe affiliations in the common census reports. Now the “Half-breed” identity Cher sings about could be categorized as “White,” “American Indian” and “Cherokee.”
Social Explorer users can dig deeper into how Native Americans have been counted with the report tools.
Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge is attending the 35th annual Social Science History Association conference this week, where he will be on three panels:
He will be chairing a panel on “New Directions in Historical GIS (1): Substantive findings and web-based resources” where he will be leading the discussion and presenting, “Exploring Long Term US Change: Research and Teaching with Social Explorer.”
He will also be chairing a session on “The Voting Rights Act at 45: New Directions and New Challenges,” featuring his article “Success or Failure in Cumulative Voting Systems.”
Additionally, he will be a participant in “Foundations of the Mortgage Meltdown,” which includes his paper “The Origins of the “Bubble” and the Financial Crisis 2008: “Looting” by Lenders or Default by Profligate Borrowers.”
Visit the exhibition hall to meet our friends at the Minnesota Population Center. You can find out more about Social Explorer at their booth, and if you mention our blog, you might get a Social Explorer tote bag.
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