The EMSI Blog is a continuously updated source of information about regional development issues. You’ll find articles, links, news, case studies, and highlights of best practices and whitepapers from both this site and from around the web. Short on time? Subscribe to an RSS feed for the blog and other site content by clicking the link at the bottom of the page.

The Kauffman Foundation has released a new report on increasing entrepreneurship in the US economy. The report’s foundational assumption is that entrepreneurs have created most of the new technologies and business models that have fueled our nation’s staggering productivity growth in the past few decades.

The central policy recommendations of the report are

1. “Ensuring a skilled workforce” by improving K-16 education and beyond in math, science, and entrepreneurial thinking, as well as making it easier for skilled and educated immigrants to work in the US.
2. “Reforming health care” to reduce costs and risks for the self-employed and small businesses.
3. “Promoting innovation” by reforming the patent system, increasing commercialization of university research, and monitoring foreign R&D activity for new ideas.
4. “Limiting overly burdensome regulation and liability litigation,” which have a greater effect on entrepreneurial firms than on large established corporations.

Read the full report here.

Update 2 (5/1/2008): EMSI has released the revised dataset, now incorporating state projections from New York (the last state to provide them).

Update (4/16/2008): We have temporarily reverted to the previous version of our data pending a review, testing, and revision of the new industry/occupation projections. The new data, with revised projections, will be re-released on Thursday, May 1, 2008. We apologize for any inconvenience to our users.

Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. (EMSI) is pleased to announce the release of its spring 2008 data set. All of our industry, occupation, demographic, indicator, and regional input-output modeling data have been rebuilt using our most sophisticated integration process ever and the latest available data from our 80-plus government sources. This update affects past, current, and projected data, so numbers will differ slightly from those contained in past EMSI data releases.

Here is an overview of the additions and changes in the new data (note that a few elements are still being added but will be available by the end of the week):

New County-Level Indicators

In this data release, we have continued to expand our portfolio of county-level economic indicators. We’ve added:

• Mortgage data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), including number of loans and total loan amounts from regular and subprime lenders (identified by the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development).
• (Coming soon) Overall workforce indicators from the Census LEHD data set, including job churn (turnover) and percentage of workforce by age group and gender.
• Social Security beneficiaries and benefit amounts, both total and for retirees only.
• Building permits issued by year for both single- and multi-family units.
• Annual and monthly overall unemployment rate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) - monthly figures coming soon.
• Estimates of total persons in poverty by county, children in poverty, and median household income, all from the Census’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) program.
• (Coming soon) Personal income information from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), including dividend/interest/rent income, transfer payments (Social Security, welfare payments, veterans’ benefits, government grants and loans, unemployment benefits, etc), and overall per-capita personal income.

Methodology Updates for Published Industry/Occupation Data

• We use the latest data sources, especially 1st and 2nd quarter 2007 covered employment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
• The Economic Impact input-output model uses updated national 2002 benchmark and 2006 annual tables from the BEA, inclusion of Census of Governments data, and an improved regionalization methodology for a more updated and accurate model.
• More sophisticated combination of covered employment (BLS) and complete employment (BEA), to account for BEA’s occasional re-classifications of jobs from one industry or county to another. This results in a more accurate count of proprietors and non-covered wage and salary jobs in cases where the BEA’s “complete” employment numbers are actually lower than the BLS’s covered employment numbers. This creates better local data, although it means that our state and national totals are no longer strictly benchmarked to BEA totals.

Improved, More Localized Projections

In the past, we controlled our own local projections first to statewide and then to national projections. We have since found that this sometimes places too much weight on national trends, which could override local trends. We now put more weight on our own local projections, official sub-state area projections (where available), and official statewide projections. (We still use national projections to adjust our own local projections initially, mainly because national projections are the most up-to-date and have the most industry-by-industry detail.) Overall, this results in more localized industry/occupation projections.

Finally, we have made minor adjustments to our demographics projection methodology to improve projections in certain counties where different racial/ethnic populations have rapidly divergent growth rates compared to statewide trends.

Workforce3one has an informative collection of documents that summarize the lessons of Workforce Innovation Networks (WINs) — an initiative to build capacity of employer organizations (such as chambers) to serve as market-driven workforce intermediaries. Documents include:

• Organizing and Supporting the Employer Role in Workforce Development: A Guide for Employer Organizations
• Creating Community Advancement Initiatives: A “How To” Manual
• Building Employer-Responsive Workforce Systems at the State Level: A “How To” Manual
• Providing Business Services: A “How To” Manual
• Partnering with One-Stop Career Centers-Strategies for Recruiting and Training Employees

Download the PDFs from Workforce3one’s page (free reg. req’d), or at Jobs for the Future.

EMSI’s data, modeling, and consulting services played a key role in a report released today by Bruce Corrie, professor of economics and director of the Strategic Business Design Institute at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The report, titled “Ethnic Capital and Minnesota’s Future: Mexican Americans in Minnesota,”  examines the consumer spending power, entrepreneurial capital, productive capital, cultural capital, and other ways that Mexican-Americans benefit the Minnesota economy. The report finds that Mexican-Americans have consumer power of $1 billion, pay $283 million in personal taxes, and have large impacts on the state’s industries and labor market.

The National Science Board has released a report and data tool that includes dozens of state-specific science & engineering indicators.

Science and Engineering Indicators (SEI) is first and foremost a volume of record comprising the major high-quality quantitative data on the U.S. and international science and engineering enterprise. SEI is factual and policy-neutral. It does not offer policy options and it does not make policy recommendations. SEI employs a variety of presentational styles—tables, figures, narrative text, bulleted text, Web-based links, highlights, introductions, conclusions, reference lists—to make the data accessible to readers with different information needs and different information-processing preferences.

The data are “indicators.” Indicators are quantitative representations that might reasonably be thought to provide summary information bearing on the scope, quality, and vitality of the science and engineering enterprise. The indicators reported in SEI are intended to contribute to an understanding of the current environment and to inform the development of future policies. SEI does not model the dynamics of the science and engineering enterprise, and it avoids strong claims about the significance of the indicators it reports. SEI is used by readers who hold a variety of views about which indicators are most significant for different purposes.

SEI is prepared by the National Science Foundation’s Division of Science Resources Statistics (SRS) under the guidance of the National Science Board (Board). It is subject to extensive review by outside experts, interested federal agencies, Board members, and NSF internal reviewers for accuracy, coverage, and balance.

UPDATE: The data release has been rescheduled for March 24th.

The EMSI data team is pleased to announce that our regular biannual data update has been scheduled for March 17th 24th. Industry, occupation, demographic, indicators, and input-output data sets are being re-built using the latest information from our sources as well as our most sophisticated data integration process ever. Update highlights include: (1) Improved data unsuppression process to estimate ‘nondisclosed’ figures in government data; (2) Expanded use of states’ regional/local industry projections instead of simply state-level projections; (3) New county-level indicators covering home mortgages, social security beneficiaries, Census LEHD workforce indicators, and Census poverty estimates; and (4) updated Economic Impact input-output model data incorporating Census of Governments data and the latest industry matrices from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (2002 Benchmark and 2006 Annual).

We’re very excited about these improvements. If you have any questions, feel free to contact our Customer Solutions department.

The College Board’s National Commission on Community Colleges has released its final report, titled “Winning the Skills Race and Strengthening America’s Middle Class: An Action Agenda for Community Colleges.”

The report highlights the contributions of America’s community colleges and their potential for meeting key future challenges for our national economy, while at the same time bemoaning the fact that they are “the nation’s overlooked asset.”

It goes on to make some key recommendations, such as:

1. Federal reform legislation to modernize and reinvigorate colleges at a national level.
2. State and local reform efforts to improve funding and align K-20 systems.
3. College efforts to improve accountability metrics, degree production, and student access and success.

The Association of Community College Trustees, a long-time partner of EMSI/CCbenefits, has posted a statement applauding the report and reinforcing its conclusions.

Last summer, EMSI completed a study of the Walla Walla region’s wine production and tourism cluster. Recently the Wall Street Journal ran this article that focuses on the leadership of Walla Walla Community College, which is arguably responsible for the industry’s rapid growth and which has sparked numerous similar programs at other community colleges across the country.

Among the figures cited in the WSJ article is the stunning result of EMSI’s study: that the wine production and tourism industry has saved the area’s economy from stagnation or decline in the past decade, and that in the next decade over 15% of the area’s jobs will be directly or indirectly dependent on it.

The story is a stellar example of how community colleges can become leaders in economic development–with the right mix of foresight, initiative, passion, and (let’s admit it) a bit of good luck.

Read EMSI’s full report (PDF)

Walla Walla Community College, Institute for Enology and Viticulture

Walla Walla Wine Cluster Economic Development Project

Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance

The Advisory Committee on Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy—which is backed by the Commerce department and includes leaders of industry heavyweights such as Microsoft, 3M, IBM, UPS, and Wal-Mart—has released its first report on innovation metrics.

Among their recommendations are that federal agencies (Commerce, Labor, Census, IRS) step-up data sharing to improve industry analysis and that the Bureau of Economic Analysis collect new measures of industry inputs and productivity.

Read or download the report materials here.

(Via EDPro via BusinessWeek)

Read the full story here.

A new study shows Western Iowa Tech Community College annually contributes more than $308 million to the Siouxland economy, equal to about 5.5 percent of the region’s total income.

“The report confirms the indispensable role that WITCC plays in the regional economy,” WITCC President Dr. Robert Dunker said. “And, what is equally important, the report establishes the college’s major impact on regional vitality by providing hard facts and dollar values using the most reliable methods available.”

Idaho-based EMSI/CCbenefits Inc., a leading provider of socioeconomic impact and strategic planning tools to community and technical colleges in the United States and Canada, conducted the study for Western Iowa Tech and the state’s other 14 community colleges.