I gave a presentation today that included the following graphs. I looked at unemployment on a county-by-county basis in Minnesota and North Dakota. The concentrations of unemployment are pretty interesting.
Unemployment & Income in ND, MN
Taxable Sales & Purchases Map
Location matters. A lot. The more I read and study about the North Dakota economy the clearer that becomes. As I go through this I am looking more and more at the various locations for economic activity in the state, as the following map demonstrates.
Probabilistic Thinking & Local Economic Development
One of the things I try to encourage in all students and develop in all my classes is an appreciation for probability. The inclusion of this is obvious in a statistics class, but it is something vital for understanding the world around us, particularly when it comes to economic and business policy. For those that listened to my show with JT at the end of September much of this may seem repetitious, but it is important enough that it bears repeating.
Continue reading Probabilistic Thinking & Local Economic Development
Initial Unemployment Claims, ND
The discussion surrounding the oil boom and broader performance in the North Dakota economy tends to focus on variables such as employment, unemployment, and labor force. Nothing wrong with that really; these three measures provide important insights into labor markets and, at least indirectly, broader economic performance. There is a different measure, available with a much higher frequency and likely more useful to the broader discussions of economic performance: unemployment insurance claims.
North Dakota Metro Area Growth
It is a fun time to be an economist with an interest in data, and it has nothing to do with election policies because, as we all know, those have nothing to do with data anyway (zing!). The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its GDP by Metro Area report this week (available here). The first question many would have is: why do we care about a report that covers 2015, that is in the past?