Reference at Newman Library

Author: fdonnelly

Demographic Data for Place of Work

I’ve had a number of questions from students looking for demographics for the city based on where people work. Most demographic data that’s collected is based on the geography where people LIVE – finding information about where people WORK in a given place is difficult, especially for small places (below the state and county level).

Rather than fixating on finding a specific statistic, you may have to evaluate several different sources to serve as a proxies to indicate areas of interest (i.e. areas that have a higher density of people engaged in commercial activity during the day). Each source is a trade-off where you’ll sacrifice one element (currency, small geography, or compilation by industry or occupation) for another.

Many sources with industry data classify businesses using the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS), a hierarchical system of codes. For definitions and a breakdown of codes visit the NAICS site. Federal and state sources will use county names (Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens, Richmond) instead of borough names (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island).

Industry / Occupation data (in order of recommendation):

  1. County and ZIP Code Business Patterns – a census survey, use it to find a summary of the number of businesses and employees by industry for a county or zip code. Industries are classified using NAICS. An alternate source is the Economic Census, but the latest data for 2007 is not available yet for ZIP codes.
  2. Workforce Trends in the NYC Region – the CUNY center for Urban Research has produced county and zip code level maps of establishments and employees by NAICS sectors. Change the drop down box from NYC Metro to NYC and Nassau to see the zip code level maps. (The map doesn’t label the zip codes – for a basic zip code map go here).
  3. Reference USA – a library database that allows you to build lists of specific businesses by name based on geography (county, zip code), industrial classification (NAICS), and business name. For each business you’ll get data for the number of employees, sales, square footage of store, and more. Data can be summarized or downloaded into a spreadsheet.
  4. 2006-2008 American Community Survey – get detailed info about people based on where they LIVE (use the map under the Neighborhoods tab of the NYC data guide to access profiles for neighborhood-like areas called PUMAs), but place of work questions are far fewer and not available below the county / borough level. For county/borough place of work data via the American Factfinder look at the American Community Survey 3 year data tables for Journey to Work data by workplace geography – the data will be broken down by transit method to work, occupation, and industry.
  5. 2000 Census – definitive in that it provides work place population by all geographies (counties, ZIP Codes, census tracts) by occupation and industry, but it’s rather old for doing current research. Rather than going to the census directly, you can access compiled reports from the NYC Dept of City Planning.
  6. Exisiting Reports – New York City Labor Market Information Service has detailed reports on different industries within the city, which may provide some breakdown of the data. The NYC Department of Planning has several special projects and neighborhood studies, which may include special surveys or statistics on business, traffic, and land use conducted particularly for that study.
  7. Search for news – someone may have conducted their own research at some point and did a survey – search the library’s databases; Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete, Factiva, and ABI Inform are good places to start.

Proxies for density (transit and land use)

Final note – many of these sources, and others, are available via the NYC data guide.

Powerpoint Slides Office 2010

The first question I received today – how do you print multiple slides from Powerpoint to a single page? The computers on the 2nd floor now have Microsoft Office 2010 installed, and the menu for doing this is no longer in the same place, and isn’t easy to find if you’ve never used Office 2007/2010 before (I never have).

To figure out how to do this – visit this Microsoft help page for Powerpoint.

The computers at the reference desk and in our office still have Office 2003 installed – so for now, we can’t demonstrate or see how this works – send students to that page if they need help (or if someone has a better / more concise help page, feel free to suggest one).

Find NYC Neighborhood Profiles with Google Map

I’ve created a Google Map that makes it much easier for students to find and access neighborhood profiles for census data. You can click on a neighborhood to identify it or you can click on the neighborhood name in the legend (you need to view the full map in a separate window to see the legend) to find it. Once a neighborhood is selected, you can click a link that opens the latest profile for this area from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 3 year estimates (currently data from 2006-2008).

I’ve embedded it in this blog – but you can also access it from the NYC Data LibGuide that I created from the Neighborhoods tab. For a full-sized view of the map in a new window, click the View a Larger Map link that appears below the map.


View Larger Map

The map shows the location of the 55 public use microdata areas (PUMAs) for the city. PUMAs are census statistical areas that approximate neighborhoods and are identified by a 5 digit number. The city and the census bureau have assigned neighborhood names to all of these areas, but you can’t use these names to directly search for data at the census bureau site; you need to know the PUMA number. This finding aid ties everything together – PUMA numbers, their neighborhood name, the location and boundaries of the area, underlying place names and features, and direct links to the profiles.

I’ll be updating this map each fall when new data is released.

Healthcare and Demographic Data for NYC

Students in the MBA in Healthcare Admin program are currently working on capstone projects – I’ve helped a few students already, Louise has had several, and Rita provided some details of a consultation she had in a recent email. Many of these projects involve site selection for different kinds of medical facilities and doctors offices. While the focus of each project differs and will require them to use different sources, there are a few common, core resources that will be useful to all of them:

For neighborhood demographic data:

  • You can use the US Census Bureau and the NYC Dept of Planning site, which has aggregated much of the census data into convenient profiles. To use these sources, you’ll have to use geography other than ZIP codes, because zip code-level census data is only updated every ten years (thus, the data is from the decennial 2000 census, and is out of date). You can get more recent data if you look at the Census American Community Survey (2006-2008) if you look at special areas called PUMAs (public use microdata areas), which are statistical areas that are similar to neighborhoods within NYC.

    • The charts and maps on this page will show you the PUMA numbers for each neighborhood (for example, the Upper East Side is PUMA 03805). Once you know the PUMA # for your neighborhood, you can browse the NYC population profiles here to get reports for that area (note – these are NOT the community area profiles, which generally contain just 2000 census data), or you can visit the Census Bureau’s page directly to build detailed tables for your PUMA / neighborhood from the 2006-2008 ACS.

    For data on the number of doctors / medical practices in a neighborhood:

  • Go to the library’s databases page and select ReferenceUSA from the list. Once you’re in, select the US Healthcare database. From there you’ll be able to search by the doctor’s specialty and by ZIP code to generate a list of all doctors in that area who specialize in a particular kind of medicine. You can download a complete list using this database.

    • For medical information for specific neighborhoods:

  • Look at the neighborhood profiles created by the NYC Department of Health – they will give you an overview of health-related issues (smoking, obesity, insurance coverage and rates, some vital stats) for each neighborhood (the neighborhoods resemble the PUMA areas that you can download from the census). The site has a lot of additional information so students will want to dig through it thoroughly – one key resource is this map and table of health insurance coverage by neighborhood.

    • For market research of a particular aspect of the medical industry:

  • Go to the library’s databases page and select MarketResearch.com.

    • UNdata Page – Country Data

    The UN is a massive organization composed of smaller agencies, organizations, and projects that all produce data. In many cases the data they provide is hosted on individual websites, which makes it difficult to find and sift through stats.

    The UNdata page (http://data.un.org/) is a central repository for statistical data about countries that captures many of these datasets in one place. You can search for datasets or a particular variable or drill down through categories that are arranged by agency and topic. Datasets include population, education, labor, crime, health, technology, trade, and environmental issues. Once you select a particular dataset you can filter by country and build comparative country tables that you can download.

    In addition to comparative tables, which show you one variable for many countries, you can also access country profiles which show you many of the variables for one country. Getting to the profiles (which are collectively called the World Statistics Pocketbook) is a little tricky as they are buried on the site – here’s the link – http://data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx

    NY Metro Area ACS Geodatabase

    We are now offering a value-added GIS census product through the Baruch Geoportal. The NY Metro ACS Geodatabase (NYMAG) contains geographic features and 2005-2007 American Community Survey data tables for the entire New York Metropolitan Area. Users will be able to download this geodatabase and use it with ArcGIS software to create thematic maps of census data at the public use microdata area (PUMA) geographic level. PUMAs are geographic areas that are useful surrogates for the city’s community districts or neighborhoods. Outside the city, PUMAs are subdivisions of counties.

    The geodatabase, complete with user documentation and an example map, is available for download from the Baruch Geoportal at: http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/geoportal/data/nymag/.

    Intermediate to advanced GIS users are the intended audience for this database. Hopefully we can roll out a simplified Google Maps interface for novices and non-GIS users sometime in the future. There are no access restrictions – anyone can download it, but will need access to GIS software in order to use it. The geodatabase is in Microsoft Access format which means that anyone with Microsoft Office can work with the data tables, but they won’t be able to use the geographic features without GIS software.

    Many thanks to Clint Newsom who worked this summer as a GIS intern on this project – he is largely responsible for making it all happen. Clint is now back at the Information School at the University of Michigan, wrapping up his Info Studies degree.

    New Baruch Geoportal

    The Baruch Geoportal (formerly known as the Baruch Geoserver) is now a public website that can be accessed from anywhere. The Geoportal is hosted in the library and provides GIS data, maps, and information about GIS facilities and educational opportunities at Baruch.

    You can access it from this url:

    http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/geoportal/

    There are also links to the Geoportal from the library’s databases page and from the geography / GIS subject guide.