The American Community Survey (ACS) is the largest continuous household survey in the United States, providing a wealth of information about the economic, social and demographic characteristics of persons, as well as housing characteristics. One goal of the ACS is to serve as a cost-effective vehicle for collecting information required by law, regulation, or executive order on behalf of Federal...

The temporary help services industry has bounced back from the recession and continues to grow. Newly available data are enabling the Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) to re-examine this important industry and update a report on the temp industry that we published last year. 1 Although we don't know exactly how many temporary workers actually work in the manufacturing sector, we...

Small firms play an increasingly important role in U.S. manufacturing and now account for almost half of America's manufacturing employment. Dense networks of these small manufacturers are vital to the process of taking a product from concept to market, and the exchange of manufacturing know-how across suppliers is essential for the diffusion of the new products and innovative processes that give...

The growing importance of data in the economy is hard to dispute. But what does this mean for workers and jobs? A lot, as it turns out: higher paying (over $40/hour), faster growing jobs. In this report we identify occupations where data analysis and processing are central to the work performed and measure the size of employment and earnings in these occupations, as well as in the industries that...

More than one-quarter of American homes have not adopted internet service, many citing cost as their primary reason. Since market competition can significantly affect consumer prices, we set out to ask: how many Internet service providers (ISPs) are available to consumers at different levels of download speeds?

Large firms depend on suppliers for most of their value-added. Many suppliers are small and their viability is closely tied to their ability to access and manage working capital. The Obama Administration’s SupplierPay initiative was developed to bring companies together to address the working capital challenges facing small firms. This paper explores the potential economic benefits – throughout...

The temporary help services industry has bounced back from the recession and continues to grow. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Employment Statistics (CES) program, the temporary help industry only accounts for 2 percent of all employment in the U.S. economy (as of July 2014) but accounts for 11 percent of all the jobs created since the end of the recession. Growth...

Everyone is talking about the importance of data to our society as data improves all of our decisions: those we make as individuals, as businesses, as governments. The federal government has been in the data business for quite some time, going back to the first decennial Census in 1790. Since then, the U.S. government has played a key role in providing valuable data to our country. Just how...