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Steve Doig presents "Creating a CBP (County Business Patterns) Lesson" during the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism's annual Business Journalism Week, Jan. 3, 2014. Doig is the Knight Chair in Journalism, specializing in computer-assisted reporting, at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Arizona State University. The annual event features two concurrent seminars, Business Journalism Professors and Strictly Financials for journalists. For more information about business journalism training, please visit http://businessjournalism.org.
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S T E V E . D O I G @ A S U . E D U
CREATING A CBP LESSON
LESSON OVERVIEW
• Discuss Census Bureau as a rich source of business/economic data.
• Download county-level economic sector data on payroll, employees and establishments for two different time periods (like pre- and post-recession.)
• Use Excel to calculate useful measures – totals, differences, percents and percentage change – across time.
• Discover how different sectors of the local economy have changed across time.
LESSON GOALS FOR STUDENTS
• Learn about Census Bureau business data as a source of story ideas.
• Learn to find local economic data about industry sectors with County Business Patterns from Census.
• Learn to use Excel spreadsheet to calculate sums, differences, percents and percentage change.
• Learn to use results of calculations to spot trends in the data.
PREPARATION
• Download raw tables from Census • Prepare a spreadsheet that has two different years of
data side by side. • Format the numbers and text to make them more
readable. • Delete the “first quarter payroll” columns (why? kind of
redundant to annual payroll.) • Delete “total for all sectors” row (why? So students can
calculate the totals themselves.) • Add variable names to be calculated during the lesson.
(or have students do that.) • Save and put somewhere for students to download
during lesson.
WWW.CENSUS.GOV/ECON/CBP/INDEX.HTML
WWW.CENSUS.GOV/ECON/CBP/INDEX.HTML
PICK STATE, THEN COUNTY
GET THIS TABLE
SAVE AS A CSV FILE
OPEN RAW TABLE IN EXCEL
SELECT, COPY, THEN PASTE INTO A NEW WORKSHEET
PASTE 2011 AND 2007 SIDE BY SIDE
DELETE “FIRST QUARTER PAYROLL” COLUMNS
FORMAT TO MAKE IT READABLE; ADD 2011 AND 2007 TO THE VARS
ADD NEW COLUMNS FOR LESSON
EXCEL CALCULATIONS
• Find number change in number of employees for each sector
• Find number change in annual payroll by sector • Find number change in total establishments by
sector • Find percentage change in number of employees
for each sector • Find percentage change in annual payroll by
sector • Find percentage change in total establishments by
sector
FORMULAS FOR LESSON
ANSWERS
PATTERNS TO EXPLORE
• What was the economy-wide change in total employees, payroll and establishments between the two periods?
• Which sectors gained/lost the most in absolute terms?
• Which sectors gained/lost the most in percentage terms?
OTHER IDEAS
• Calculate each sectors’ share of the total economy in both periods. Who is gaining and who is shrinking?
• Calculate the “average income” by sector (payroll*1000/employees). Correct for inflation by using the CPI. Any real growth/loss?
• Explore change in the size of establishments by using the bottom of the CBP table.
• If you want to focus on a particular sector, go back to the CBP website table and click on “detail”. Download that resultinto Excel and do similar calculations.