Nov/Dec 2006
This month's map identifies "weak market" cities based on the overall economic well-being of the city and the economic well-being of the residents. For more details, please read the accompanying research brief.
October 2006
This month's map shows the changes in housing values, income, and share of income used to pay for homes and rent by county in Connecticut. For more detail about these trends, please read the accompanying research brief.
September 2006
This map depicts deviation from actual and projected per capita income based on uniform growth between 1969 and 2004. This article written by our research staff provides more details.
August 2006
**This map is very detailed, therefore the PDF is large - 8 mb**
This map reflects the change in owned and rented housing in Connecticut from 1980 to 2005 by town. Percentage change in renter (hatch lines) and owner occupied (color shades) units are displayed. Showing both allows the viewer to observe the similarities and differences. Towns that have the largest increase in both categories are Colchester, Hebron, Ellington and Voluntown. Others with minimum changes include Hartford, Bridgeport, Westport, Darien and Canton. More interesting are the towns where the change in renter-occupied housing moves opposite to the change in owner-occupied housing (polarization). Trumbull, North Branford, Chester, Union and Wolcott indicate large increases of rental housing and small increases of home ownership, while Newtown, New Hartford, Warren and Hampton have the largest decreases in rentals, and have the largest increases in ownership. Changes in this 25-year period result from changes in employment and local industries, age, income and other reasons.
July 2006
Nationally, employment in the Professional and Business Services sector grew by nearly 6.4 million from 1990 through 2004. The annual average growth rate in this sector was 3.2 percent, more than double the 1.4 percent observed for all industries. The map shows that the distribution of this growth has a distinct regional flavor. Many of the mountain and southern states experienced strong growth while the northeastern region, especially Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and Delaware all had growth rates below 2.1 percent. An article written by our research staff explores this sector.
June 2006
This month's map shows patents per capita for all 50 states. Idaho is the front-runner, with 1,308 patents per capita in 2004. In general, southern New England, the mid-Atlantic states and the Midwest all perform well in this metric, as do the western states. Connecticut ranks ninth with almost 492 patents per capita.
May 2006
These maps depict the geographical and weighted mean centers of New England, by county, for 2000. The weighted mean centers are of total population and employment, calculated on a grid of 20 mile intervals. They fall into the Boylston / Clinton areas of Massachusetts. The formula for calculating the weighted mean is displayed in the legend.
April 2006
Where are the young Americans? The 25 to 34-year-old age cohort can set the pace for economic development in a region as the join the workforce and form households. This month's map shows the concentration for each county in the U.S. in this important cohort.
March 2006
While the changes in employment in Connecticut are carefully watched, the effects of these changes are felt the most in Connecticut's 169 municipalities. This map shows the changes in employment for Connecticut's 169 towns and cities since 1980. The 18 towns which grew by 5,000 or more employees are shown in the dark blue. Forty towns with employment growth of between 1,501 and 4,999 are shown in the light blue. The 81 towns, shaded light yellow, grew by between 1 and 1,500 employees. The orange shaded towns (23) lost up to 5,000 employees and the seven towns, shaded red, lost more than 5,000 employees between 1980 and 2004.
February 2006
This map depicts the mean scores in problem-solving by country for 2003. The U.S. outperforms South America, the Balkans and Southeast Asia. It is on par with Eastern and Southern Europe, but scores lower than Northern and Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. Note that the U.S. falls behind most first world countries in this category. Data was obtained from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an internationally standardized assessment that was jointly developed by participating countries and administered to 15-year-olds in schools. Tests are typically administered to between 4,500 and 10,000 students in each country.
January 2006
This map depicts the Biotech clusters based upon the posted SIC codes for the Northeast corridor and California. By overlaying California upon the corridor, its sheer geographical size is apparent, however, the Northeast corridor has a greater percentage of Biotech companies in the U.S.
