data – St. Thomas Libraries Blog

Finding Census Statistics during the Government Shutdown

I blogged last week about government sites that are down because of the partial government shutdown.

If your assignment can’t wait any longer, and you’re scratching your head about where to get government data and stats when so many websites are shut down, we do have some ideas for you! (We’ll keep this list updated as we hear more, too – so check back!)

The Wayback Machine (waybackmachine.org) has done a great job archiving in-depth versions of government sites – as opposed to just screenshots of homepages – so a lot of data can still be found via their site. It will not be the most up-to-date, nor will it be complete, but it is better than nothing!

The Minnesota Population Center, part of the U of MN, offers U.S. Census data from the decennial census back to 1850, as well as the American Community Survey (through 2011) and Current Population Survey through their National Historical Geographic Information System and Integrated Public Use Microdata Series.

These and some other great hints are published by the Pew Research Center – and more are continually being added by researchers across the country.

As always, if you have specific research questions, please don’t hesitate to ask an UST librarian – we are happy to help out!

October 10, 2013 by

Business & Economics, News & Events, Recently Read

For the College Educated: Increasing Employment … Lower Unemployment …… and Higher Earnings.

An interesting report and data summary on issues relating to higher education from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

By the numbers:

Over the 1992–2009 period, the number of college-educated workers increased from 27 million to 44 million.
In 2009, the unemployment rate for workers with college degrees was 4.6 percent. The rate for workers without a high school diploma was 10 points higher.
In 2009, the median weekly earnings of workers with bachelor’s degrees were $1,137. This amount is 1.8 times the average amount earned by those with only a high school diploma, and 2.5 times the earnings of high school dropouts.

These and myriad other data on degree attainment, student’s time use (1.5 hrs/day traveling? lots of commuter students I guess), degree attainment in U.S. compared to other countries, higher education workplaces, costs, etc. Includes this interesting chart on Professor pay and employment by discipline:

prof_pay

September 28, 2010 by