How Important Are Small Businesses?

We often hear that small businesses are the engines of job creation in the United States. According to an article on Forbes.com their value and the role they play in our economy is sometimes underestimated because, they are in fact, small. But the truth is there’s nothing small about the impact they have on our economy. They cite a recent study by Entrepreneur Magazine that there are between 25 million and 27 million small businesses in the U.S. that account for 60 to 80 percent of all U.S. jobs. And, a recent study by Paychex, says that small businesses produce 13 times more patents that larger firms.

Those numbers may be a little high, at least compared to numbers derived from the Census Bureau.  The website Feefighters.com offers the following infographic that lays out the importance of small businesses (which typically means businesses with 500 or fewer employees) based on Census Bureau statistics.

Click to Enlarge

  Locally, small businesses make up nearly ALL of the establishments in our area based on the definition above of having 500 or fewer employees. Here's a breakdown for Herkimer and Oneida Counties of the number and proportion of business establishments based on their size (as measured by the number of paid employees that they have). These numbers come from the County Business Patterns for the latest year (2011).

2012 Population Estimates for Cities and Towns

Each year, the Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program utilizes current data on births, deaths, and migration to calculate population change since the most recent decennial census and produce a time series of estimates of population, demographic components of change, and housing units. The annual time series of estimates begins with the most recent decennial census data and extends to the vintage year. These estimates are used in federal funding allocations, as survey controls, as denominators for vital rates and per capita time series, and as indicators of recent demographic changes. With each new release of annual estimates, the entire time series of estimates is revised for all years back to the last census. All previously published estimates are superseded and archived.

Below are the data showing the most recent population estimates for each county and their respective towns and cities. The two maps give you a quick visual as to areas (shaded in green) that the Estimates Program show as having gained population since the 2010 Census.

Click To Enlarge Herkimer County Map

Click To Enlarge Oneida County Map

E-PLOSION !!! The Rise of E-book Circulation in Local Libraries

Between buying a Kindle, an iPad, or an Android Tablet, a lot of people are moving toward paperless book reading these days. Preliminary data from the annual BookStats study, released last month by the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group, shows that 457 million electronic versions of books, or e-books, were sold last year. That's up 4456% since 2008, when just 10 million e-books were sold. And while this is impressive growth, it's still fewer than the 557 million hardcovers sold last year.

But even with more than a 4000% growth in sales, the news isn't "perfect" for the e-book sellers out there. After three years of triple-digit increases, the number of e-books sold last year grew by only 43%. And that's enough of a difference in the annual growth rate to have publishers talking about an e-book "slowdown," even as digital books remain the fastest-growing part of the market. They now account for about 20% of all book sales reported by publishers.

The Herkimer County 2012 Risk Assessment Profile (which I mentioned in this previous blog post) has a ton of information in it, including some data about e-book access among patrons of the Mid-York Library sytem. Among the vast amounts of data it has concerning Herkimer County is the chart below. It shows the huge growth in e-book and audio-file circulation for the libraries in Herkimer County between 2008 and 2011. Usually, downloadable e-books and audiobooks figures are included in total circulation figures; however the data have been disaggregated to illustrate that usage in Herkimer County tripled nearly across the board over 3 years and patrons in Herkimer County are using innovative technologies provided by their libraries. Be sure to check out the Risk Assessment and see what other interesting data it brings to light!

Click to Enlarge

NYS Atlas Project Website: Abandoned Gem on the Net

While the New York State Atlas Project appears to be an abandoned blog that has been unattended for about a year , there are several rather interesting maps available on the website. There are several categories of maps on the right to choose from, and then a blog post associated with most of the individual posts. Once you pull up the map or post, you can zoom into (or out of) the map to see a specific area more closely. Clicking on a county gives you a plethora of data about the thematic topic and actually is pretty interesting.

For example, in looking at some of the economic maps, I was interested in seeing the tourism jobs information. Focusing on Oneida County, I clicked on it to find the following data pop up:

Now, I'm not sure if the "Total Wages" is supposed to be in millions of dollars ($ mn = ???) but it would make sense. Regardless, I found it more interesting to see that there were some 7,100 tourism based jobs in the county, and that their average wages were $23,700 per year. Unfortunately there is a minimal amount of source information about the data, so there is no way to tell exactly where some of these numbers come from. Regardless, at the very least, the various posts offer some ideas for future projects we could look into mapping!

Flags of Our Fathers: Flag Day Is This Friday !

Our First Official Flag

Flag Day is celebrated on June 14 of each year. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States, which happened on that date in 1777 by resolution of the Second Continental Congress. John Adams, one of our nation’s Founding Fathers, is credited with proposing, and getting passed, a resolution designating the flag at the left as our first official national flag.

Since 1818, a star for each new state has been added to the flag on the Fourth of July immediately following each state's admission to the union. In years in which multiple states were admitted, the number of stars on the flag has jumped correspondingly; the most pronounced example of this is 1890, when five states were admitted within the span of a single year. This change has typically been the only change made with each revision of the flag since 1777, with the exception of changes in 1795 and 1818, which increased the number of stripes to 15 and then returned it to 13, respectively.

The exact pattern of the stars was not specified for our flag prior to 1912. On June 24, 1912 President William Howard Taft signed an Executive Order which established the proportions of the flag and specified the arrangement and orientation of the stars. It designated that there should be six horizontal rows of eight stars each, with one point of each star pointing upward.

June 14 as the official day for celebrating our flag wasn’t recognized until four years later. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that established June 14 as Flag Day.

On June 22, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt approved the Federal Flag Code, which provided for uniform guidelines for the display and respect shown to the flag. The Flag Code does not prescribe any penalties for non-compliance nor does it include any enforcement provisions, rather it functions simply as a guide for voluntary civilian compliance. On August 2, 1949, his successor, President Harry Truman, finally signed into law a bill passed by Congress calling for Flag Day to be observed each year on June 14.

Our flag has undergone a variety of configurations since it was initially adopted. Below you can see each of these official flags of the United Statesthrough the years, going from our current flag back to that very first flag as proposed by John Adams.

And just a quick "Did You Know?" - While most American flags are manufactured in this country (according to the National Independent Flag Dealers Association between $50 and $60 million worth of American flags are manufactured in the USA) did you know that the foreign country that sells the most American flags in the US is China? Using data from its Foreign Trade Division, the Census Bureau reported that $3.6 million worth of American flags were imported into the U.S. last year. The vast majority of that amount ($3.3 million) was for U.S. flags made in China according to the numbers. Of foreign made US flags, China is responsible for more than 90% of those flags imported to our country.

American Flags Imported From Other Countries

Mexico was the leading importer of American flags from US manufacturers, by the way, buying about $200,000 worth of our flags out of the roughly $600,000 worth of American made US flags exported to other countries.