Helpful Tool To View Census.gov Economic Factors - QWI Explorer

[Andy Bartley]

Hi all,

As a new real estate investor I have been diving deep into the data sources that many pros recommend for choosing target markets. One important class of indicators is local economics - job growth/destruction, wage growth, new company starts, etc. The Census.gov website provides 32 of these indicators under a data set called Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI). One way to analyze this data is to download raw data as .CSV. This is helpful if you're looking to combine data sets.  However, if you're looking to do a quick and dirty analysis of a local economy, the Census site provides a tool called the QWI explorer. I haven't seen this show up in any previous posts so hopefully this is something folks will find useful.

The QWI explorer is a web based query and visualization tool that allows you to analyze the 32 different Quarterly Workforce Indicators economic factors for a selected state. The tool allows you to look at the trends of these indicators over time. What's more, once you've set your search criteria, you can easily download either the raw data, or a .pdf report which could make for a nice add to an investor presentation. 

There are four main variables to work with:

Y-Axis

1. Geography Level: Choose either the entire US or a specific state

2. Indicator: Choose which QWI indicator that you want to analyze. Note on the QWI selector, the tool defaults to showing the 8 most common indicators. Check the ? symbol next to the QWI drop down to see instructions on how to show all 32.

X-Axis

1. X-Axis: For trending over time you can choose annual or quarterly slices. Other analysis allow you to choose QWI indicators for multivariate analysis.

2. Group: The group function allows you to select demographic groupings like age, or geopgraphic groupings like County, MSA, or WIA.

Learn more about the QWI indicators: https://www.census.gov/data/developers/data-sets/q...

Get to the QWI explorer here: https://qwiexplorer.ces.census.gov/static/explore....

Happy hunting all!