Indeed it is. The ol' DataBlog's been quiet lately, which I regret, but I don't regret that it's mainy because I took some time off. (Forgive me for not having announced that so someone could burglarize my house and thereby land my own dwelling in the crime data.)

I'm back, but, alas, when you're the only guy who does your job, things tend to pile up while you're gone, and all you get on your return is the chance to do all your regular work, plus what you would have been doing the week before.

But I'm caught up, and ready to blast some new data at you. Fresh in the DataSphere, please find a database of economic development data for all of Virginia's 134 localities for 2001 through 2007.

This is a list of announced jobs and investment tabulated by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. I say announced because, while companies often open and factories or expand them with promises of a certain number of jobs and spending, they don't always fully come through. Even when those promises are tied to hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funded incentives to do business in a certain place.

That said, the data is still a measure of who is keeping their local economy vibrant growing, and who isn't doing so well. There's only so much new and expanding business to go around, so things can be competitive. Some localities just aren't players in the economic development game. Look at the data and you'll see that most years roughly half of Virginia's cities and counties have no new jobs or investment. Meanwhile, some just grow and grow -- think Fairfax, for example.

Roanoke, my hometown, has had some success, but not enormous success. In that period, the city had 36 announcements for a total of 2,238 jobs and $182 million in investment. Calculated per capita for comparison to other localities, Roanoke averaged a rank of 45 in jobs for every 1,000 residents over the period, and 36th in investment per 1,000 people.

Could be better, but could be a whole mess of worse.

How did your locality do?

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• Posted by Matt Chittum in
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