2015 Single Year ACS Data for Oneida County Available

You can now see the 2015 single year ACS data for Oneida County by clicking on either of the two links in the banner above: the 1 Year ACS Estimates; or the ACS Matrix.

2015 USDA County Typologies: Herkimer County

An area's economic and social characteristics have significant effects on its development and need for various types of public programs. To provide policy-relevant information about diverse county conditions to policymakers, public officials, and researchers, the USDA Economic Research Service has developed a set of county-level typology codes that captures a range ofeconomic and social characteristics.

The 2015 County Typology Codes classify all U.S. counties according to six mutually exclusive categories of economic dependence and six overlapping categories of policy-relevant themes. The economic dependence types include farming, mining, manufacturing, Federal/State government, recreation, and nonspecialized counties. The policy-relevant types include low education, low employment, persistent poverty, persistent child poverty, population loss, and retirement destination.

What’s interesting about the typography is as much what it DOESN’T show as what it does when it comes to Herkimer County. The six economic dependence categories are defined as follows:

• Farming County: Farming accounted for at 25% or more of the county's earnings or 16% or more of the employment averaged over 2010-2012.
• Mining County: Mining accounted for 13% or more of the county's earnings or 8% of the employment averaged over 2010-12.
• Manufacturing County: Manufacturing accounted for 23% or more of the county's earnings or 16% of the employment averaged over 2010-12.
• Federal/State Government County: Federal and State government accounted for 14% or more of the county's earnings or 9% or more of the employment averaged over 2010-2012.
• Recreation County: Recreation designations were based on three measures.
• Percentage of wage and salary employment in entertainment and recreation, accommodations, eating and drinking places, and real estate as a percentage of all employment reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis;
• Percentage of total personal income reported for these same categories by the Bureau of Economic Analysis; and
• Percentage of vacant housing units intended for seasonal or occasional use reported in the 2010 Census
• Nonspecialized County: The county was not a farming, mining, manufacturing, government-dependent, or recreation county.

Given those definitions, Herkimer County was tagged by the USDA as a “Recreation County”.

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When it came to the policy-relevant typography of low education, low employment, persistent poverty, persistent child poverty, population loss, and retirement destination, none of these social characteristics met the minimum thresholds for the USDA when examining Herkimer County. That does NOT mean that these issues don’t exist or have serious consequences deserving of being addressed.

Methodologically, low-education (2008-12), low-employment (2008-12), persistent poverty (1980, 1990, 2000, 2007-11), persistent child poverty (1980, 1990, 2000, 2007-11), population loss (1990, 2000, and 2010), and retirement destination (2000 and 2010) classifications were all based on census data from the years in parentheses after their names. They were defined as follows.

• Low Education: At least 20% or more of the residents age 25 to 64 did not have a high school diploma or equivalent between 2008-12.
• Low Employment: Less than 65% of residents age 25-64 were employed in 2008-12
• Persistent Poverty: A county was classified as persistent poverty if 20 percent or more of its residents were poor as measured by the 1980, 1990, and 2000 decennial censuses and the American Community Survey 5-year estimates for 2007-11.
• Persistent Child Poverty: A county was classified as persistent related child poverty if 20 percent or more of related children under 18 years old were poor as measured by the 1980, 1990, and 2000 decennial censuses and the American Community Survey 5-year estimates for 2007-11. See the Census Bureau website
• Population Loss: Number of residents declined between the 1990 and 2000 censuses and also between the 2000 and 2010 censuses.
• Retirement Destination: Number of resident 60 and older grew by 15 percent or more between 2000 and 2010.

In none of these cases did the data meet the thresholds set up by the USDA, hence Herkimer County was not tagged as having a predominance of these characteristics.

A Look at a Cost of Living Assessment for Herkimer County

Getting a measure of the cost of living for an area is not an easy thing to do. No official numbers exist for small localities – typically cost of living data covers large, rather diverse, areas. For Herkimer County, as an example, the cost of living data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis is based on all of the rest of New York State, plus the New York City metro area that stretches from Connecticut to New Jersey.Using the cost of food, clothing, and shelter from those areas as part of our cost of living analysis makes local numbers very problematic.

Various services do offer different numbers based more on local data than the example listed above. Sperling’s Best Places to Live is one of these. They assess the total cost of living in an area by looking at groceries, healthcare, housing, utilities, transportation and miscellaneous costs. Each of these areas are defined as including the following:

• Grocery  "The average cost of food in Grocery stores in an area." 
• Health  "The average cost of health care calculated using the standard daily rate for a hospital room, and the costs of a doctor's office visit and a dental checkup."
• Housing  "The average cost of an area's housing, which includes mortgage payments, apartment rents, and property tax."
• Utilities  "The average cost of heating or cooling a typical residence for the area, including electricity and natural gas."
• Transportation  "The average cost of gasoline, car insurance and maintenance expenses, and mass transit fare for the area. The cost of the vehicle and any vehicle registration and license taxes are not included."
• Miscellaneous  "The cost index of those goods and services not included in the other cost of living categories, including clothing, restaurants, repairs, entertainment, and other services."

The total of all the cost of living categories are then weighted subjectively by Sperling’s as follows: housing (30%), food and groceries (15%), transportation (10%), utilities (6%), health care (7%), and miscellaneous expenses such as clothing, services, and entertainment (32%).  State and local taxes are not included in any category. 

For Herkimer County, the data compared to the US data subsequently looks like this:

 

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Note that the US data equals 100 in each index. 

So although for Herkimer County five of the six categories score higher than the US indices, (US always equals a score of 100) their impact is offset by the extremely low score for housing costs as seen by Sperlings for our area. As a result, the overall cost of living for Herkimer County is lower than that for the country as a whole (93 versus 100).

The Places You'll Go: Post-Graduation Plans of County Graduates (2015)

Here is data from the County Report Cards of the NYS Education Department showing what the post-graduation plans were for graduates in 2015. Click the graphic to enlarge it.

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Regional HIV and AIDS Data

The County HIV/AIDS Surveillance Reports for 2013, including and excluding State Prison Inmates, are now available on the DOH public web site. The graph below shows the numbers of AIDS cases and deaths in the region from 1987 forward, as well as the number of HIV cases beginning in the year 2000 EXCLUDING prisoners. Click on it to enlarge the graph.

To get full county reports visit the link above !

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Multiple Births by Regional Residents

According to data from the NYS Department of Health, out of approximately 32,600 births in the region during the period 2002 to 2011, more than 1,200 of those births involved a "plurality" of babies - or multiple birth in more colloquial terms. The graphic below gives you an idea what that means overall.

Here's the total number of multiple births in the region from 2002-2011. Click the graph to enlarge it.

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Riding the Waves and the Trails of the Region

Data from the NYS Department of Motor Vehicles shows the number of motor boats and snowmobiles that are registered in each county, as well as those that use a county's natural resources. The graphics below show the data for Herkimer and Oneida Counties. Note how Herkimer County has considerably more boats and snowmobiles using their resources than are registered in the county.

A Quick Look at the State of Driving in the Region

A variety of data on drivers, vehicles and highways is available through the New York State Statistical Yearbook transportation section. Below are a few pieces I gathered which give you a taste of what can be found. Click on any of the graphics to see them enlarged.


Here's the basics on drivers and vehicles...

And on the types of vehicles registered in the two county region....

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And on the percent of highway miles within varying jurisdictions...

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And on the convictions for vehicle traffic convictions...

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And finally on the types of injuries or damages done in vehicle accidents...

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Regional Businesses Located in Households

Based on Census data from the 2014 ACS, here's a look at businesses that are operated out of residential homes in the two county region. Click on the graphic to enlarge it.

Children of Foreign Born Parents (2014)

Recently the Urban Institute released an article on the numbers of children with at least one foreign born parent. Below I've provided similar numbers for the state, as well as Herkimer and Oneida Counties.

Regional Changes in Group Quarter Populations: 1970 to 2010

The Census Bureau qualifies where you live as either a housing unit, or as something called a group quarter. Group Quarters (GQ) are places where people live or stay, in a group living arrangement, which is owned or managed by an entity or organization providing housing and/or services for the residents. This is not a typical household-type living arrangement. These services  may  include custodial or medical care as well as other types of assistance, and residency is commonly restricted to those receiving these services. People living in group quarters are usually not related to each other.

For our region, the group quarters population has ebbed and flowed, and in the end, over the last 40 years, it has not actually changed a lot in terms of the total numbers of people living in these facilities. Slightly less than 14,776 people lived in GQs in the Herkimer-Oneida County region in 1970; that's almost the same number as live in GQs today. Click on the chart below to enlarge it.

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So while the number of people in GQs seems to not have changed much, that doesn't mean that the characteristics of the group quarters population has remained the same. Group quarters can be classified into two large categories: Institutionalize GQs, and Non-Institutionalized GQs. 

• Institutionalized GQs include facilities for people under formally authorized, supervised care or custody at the time of interview, such as correctional facilities, nursing facilities/skilled nursing facilities, in-patient hospice facilities, mental (psychiatric) hospitals, group homes for juveniles, and residential treatment centers for juveniles.
• Non-institutionalized GQs are facilities that are not classified as institutional group quarters, such as college/university housing, group homes intended for adult, residential  treatment facilities for adults, workers’ group living quarters and Job Corps centers, and religious group quarters.

The chart below shows how each of these components of GQs has changed over time. Click to enlarge it.

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These two components have seen very different changes over the last 40 years. The light green area represents the Institutionalized GQ population for the region. While it dropped significantly from 1970 to 1980, it then began climbing through the year 2000; in the last decade it then saw another substantial drop. In contrast, the Non-Institutional GQ population, represented by the orange bars, has seen a pretty steady rise since the 1970s in the region.

What might the differences in these changes be attributed to? Further analysis of the GQs populations suggest several things have impacted both components.

In terms of the Institutionalized GQ population, changes in mental health laws in the 1970s resulted in the release of large numbers of mental health patients from institutional care, thus driving down the numbers for Institutional GQs between 1970 and 1980. Subsequent to that there was a large growth in incarcerated persons, and hence the growth between 1980 and 2000 can partly be attributed to rising prison and jail populations. By around 2000, there was also the impact of the "baby boom" generation as people in that generation began to entire a phase of life where institutional care became needed in some cases. Interestingly, by 2010 baby boomers indeed are beginning to be felt in terms of long term care facilities such as nursing homes. At the same time however, New York State has begun reducing its prison population and as a result the region experienced the closure of correctional facilities. This conflicting push-pull (the growth of baby boomer need for facility access, and the reduction of correctional facilities) seems to have resulted in a temporary lull in institutional demand overall in the last decade.

In contrast, the growth of Non-Institutional GQ populations is quite straight forward. Based on census data, college dormitory populations have more than doubled in the last 40 years clearly driving the steady growth of this component. Between 1970 and 2010, college dormitory populations grew by more than 130%. 

Below you can see how nursing home populations have risen  (impacting Institutionalized GQ numbers) and how dormitory populations have grown (impacting Non-Institutionalized GQ numbers).

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So while the overall regional GQ population is still very similar to what it was in 1970, its components, and the underlying parts of those components, have changed considerably.

Women Owned Businesses in the Region

Last week I posted about the region's minority owned businesses. Just like those data, data on women owned businesses can also be found in the 2012 Census of Business Owner, and specifically Table SB1200CSA01: Statistics for Firms by Industry, Gender, Ethnicity and Race. Below are just a few tidbits about female owned businesses in the Herkimer Oneida Counties region.

Regional Minority Owned Businesses from the 2012 Survey of Business Owners

The 2012 Census of Business Owners includes data on minority owned businesses. Table SB1200CSA01: Statistics for Firms by Industry, Gender, Ethnicity and Race, provide a plethora of data about these firms, some of which I have tried to capture below. Visit American Fact Finder at the Census Bureau and see what other data exists for these businesses !

The graphics below are based on regional data - meaning the two counties combined.

Projected Openings in Occupations Within the Mohawk Valley: 2012 to 2022

A while ago I posted on job openings in the Mohawk Valley by occupation through 2020. Note that the "Mohawk Valley" includes Fulton, Herkimer, Montgomery, Oneida, Otsego, and Schoharie Counties combined. The information has been updated an is now available for the period 2012 to 2022.

There are several ways to look at this data. First, and similar to what I did the last time, you might take a look at the actual numbers of jobs being created. Job creation takes into account brand new jobs, as well as hirees selected to replace workers that have left or retired. The chart below shows the top 10 jobs with projected growth from 2012 to 2022 for the Mohawk Valley Region.

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As the data shows, the top growth is in Office and Administrative Support jobs. The vast majority of that projected growth involves openings created mostly by current job holders leaving those positions - 770 out of a projected 900 openings.  On the other hand nearly half of the growth in Personal Care and Service jobs come from new job creation (200 out of 410 job openings).

Another way to look at these job openings is by the percentage growth they are projected to have. It's one thing to see a projected increase of 900 jobs, but another if those 900 jobs represent only a small percentage of that particular market sector. So as an alternative way to view these projections, here are the top ten projected openings by their percentages of job sector.

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In this case you can now see how the sectors with the largest percentage projected growth is Personal Care and Service (17.6% projected growth), and Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Support (15.6% projected growth).

Lastly, here is a summation of all of the sectors, their job creation projections, and current salary data.

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Occupational Attractions: Who Marries Whom By Occupation

When it comes to falling in love, it’s not just fate that brings people together—sometimes it’s their jobs. Bloomberg.com scanned data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014 American Community Survey—which covers 3.5 million households—to find out how people are pairing up by occupation.

Interestingly, here's how Urban Planners seem to match up. Click to Enlarge the graphic. Type your occupation into the space on the page to see how you might match up to your mate, job-wise. 

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Projected National Job Growth By Occupation (2024)

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics comes projected job growth within various occupations through 2024. The data provides a comparison of 2014 occupational data with the projected changes by the year 2024.

Here are three basic tables found in the Excel spreadsheet download: overall employment by major occupational group; the fastest growing occupations; and the fastest declining occupations. Click each to see them enlarged.

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Trulia Maps Cover Everything from Demographics to Crime to Home Values

Trulia is basically a real estate website but it also has an incredible amount of tools available that would be useful perhaps for grant writing and even program development.These tools can be found for any place/zip code you insert into their search engine. Here's a screen shot below on age demographics for the a census tract in south Utica.  Click on it to enlarge it.

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You can basically check out any tract by clicking it. Note that the bar at the top of the map allows you to bring up data on any number of topics and subtopics.

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So click on this link to the trulia mapping page and see how your neighborhood or town stacks up !

How We Travel to Work: An Interactive Map

A couple days ago I posted about an interactive map from Flowingdata.com that showed the times we left for work. They also have one on the mode of transportation we used to get to work. Below is a screen shot of Herkimer County's data. Click on it to enlarge it.

Note that the colored boxes near the top of the map break out this modes into vehicle based modes and non-vehicle based modes. By clicking the boxes (on the actual interactive map) you can toggle each mode on or off...or turn them ALL off but one to see how a county compares to the rest of the state.

So visit this mode of transportation to work interactive map and check out the info for your area !

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Popular Running and Biking Routes Based on App Tracking

The use of apps to track your movements, especially when exercising is exploding with the use of smart phones and body-wearable technology. Below is an example of how that technology can be used to show popular running and biking routes. Strava, a company that provides such an app, creates maps by (1) taking all of the routes reported through their app, then (2) stripping all the personal information from the data, and finally (3) provide the data to DOTs and interested groups to perform detailed analysis and glean insights into the running and biking patterns of it's patrons.

Below is a map of the Valley area (Ilion-Mohawk-Herkimer) showing the running routes popular in the area. Visit the Strava website and see what the biking routes entail, or go to your area to see popular routes!

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Interactive Map on Time Leaving for Work

The website Flowingdata.com offers the an interactive version of the map below which shows when people leave home for work. The rates are for people who have jobs and are 16 years or older. The data does not include people who work from home. Take a look at how the flow changes by varying the time bar at the top of the map!

Here's what Oneida County looks like between 7:30 and 7:59 on any given workday ! Click on the map to enlarge it.

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County Level Health Metrics

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has provided US County Profiles for every county in the United States. These profiles analyze the performance of all 3,143 US counties or county-equivalents in terms of alcohol use, life expectancy at birth, smoking prevalence, obesity, physical activity, and poverty using novel small area estimation techniques and the most up-to-date county-level information.

Below are summaries of the Herkimer and Oneida Counties data as well as links to their full profiles:

To see the full profiles, click on the county name below:

HERKIMER COUNTY

 

ONEIDA COUNTY

Overviews of both counties...

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