July 11, 2008Is this thing on?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? February 27, 2008What our legislators put stock in -- literallyState Sen. Ralph Smith, R-Botetourt, is a miserly fellow, he’s never been ashamed to say. The businessman's tight with his money. That's one reason why he's got so much of it. So, it was no big surprise for me to learn that his stock portfolio includes stock in discount shopping mecca WalMart valued between $10,001 and $50,000. We regular citizens get to know this stuff because our elected officials have to disclose it, though not in great detail. From local councils up to the state capitol, our elected leaders must file statements of economic disclosure. And while you could request these records yourself from the government, a dandy organization called the Virginia Public Access Project saves you the work and makes it all readily available on its website. This stuff isn't just for our amusement – though it can be amusing, I’ll confess. The reason is so that we work-a-day folks know where our legislators’ financial interests lie. Then we can tell if their legislating is really in the interest of those who elected them, or in the interest of boosting the value of their own portfolios. Continue reading "What our legislators put stock in -- literally" » February 8, 2008Bartender (hic) I'd like another...Another view of that liquor sales data. Alert reader Jay wondered what this liquor sales for Virginia look like when you rank our favorite distilled spirits by gallons sold, rather than dollars spent. Unfortunately, I haven't found the 2007 data by gallons yet, but I do have 2006. What you'll quickly see is that the picture's different when you look at it by volume. We might spend more on good whiskey, but what we drink the most of is good ol' knock you on yer butt and wake you up with cotton mouth cheap-o vodka. See for yourself. The numbers represent thousands of gallons sold. Yep, that's 450,000 gallons of Aristocrat vodka, comrades. So, if you were an enterprising feature writer for a big city rag like The Roanoke Times, what's the "Hey, Martha!" tidbit you'd pull out of this data? February 7, 2008What's yer poison, Virginia?The answer to that one is Jack Daniels. As in Old No. 7. As in Tennessee whiskey. Virginians spent over $21 million on Jack Black last year, making it the favorite distilled spirit in the Commonwealth in terms of dollars in sales. You can see the top 50 for 2007 in a new bubble graph I just posted. (I know this is only two, but I'm already in danger of becoming obsessed with these bubble graphs.) Turns out we have some pretty refined taste in spirits. Grey Goose vodka. Crown Royal. Jim Beam. But not everything we bought in quantity goes down as smooth. Well up on the list is Aristocrat brand vodka, which, well, doesn't exactly live up to the image suggested by its name. We bought more bottles of Aristocrat than any other liquor. As a former bartender, my guess is that's because it's the house vodka in all manner of bars from Richlands to Reston. The one that surprised me is Jagermeister at number 6 on the list. This is a dirty-motor-oil dark liqueur that tastes like black licorice soup and brings on a kind of intoxication that feels more like a narcotic than a drink. (Or so I've been told.) Popular with the regular bar set, which is to say younger folks. Generally swilled as a shooter, and lately mixed with Red Bull energy drink. The kind of thing everybody buys you on your 21st birthday, as if you weren't already on your way to embarrassing behavior without the help. Most of these top shelf liquors, you buy because they are smoother and more drinkable. Jagermeister, that stuff ain't about the taste. It's about the punch. February 4, 2008What student loans default rates say, and don't sayFrom an Indiana University study of student loan default rates: Measures of academic momentum and degree completion and the Thanks for that to alert reader Jeff Arthur, who also happens to be vice-president of information systems and financial aid at ECPI College of Technology. Jeff referenced the study in a comment last week, and kindly passed on that and a bunch of other info to inform the discussion of the federal student loan default rates now viewable in the DataSphere. Continue reading "What student loans default rates say, and don't say" » January 30, 2008Student loans: a bunch of 'em don't get paid backNearly 3.5 million federal student loans came due for repayment in 2005. By the end of the year, nearly five percent were in default for non-payment. That's bad enough, but it's actually a gargantuan improvement over 15 years earlier, when nearly one in four of the same loans were in default. Check out the default figures for over 5,000 U.S. colleges for 2003 through 2005 now in the DataSphere. The data comes from the U.S. Department of Education. You can make a number of assumptions from those figures. Some people had legitimate hardships and couldn't pay (although deferments are an option in some circumstances), while others no doubt just shirked their responsibility. But, as the U.S. Department of education sees it, those numbers reflect not only on the borrowers, but on the colleges who awarded the loans in the first place. Continue reading "Student loans: a bunch of 'em don't get paid back" » January 10, 2008More professional solicitors, same old patternAfter Roanoke Times reporter Amanda Codispoti showed me a database a few months ago of contracts between professional solicitors and public safety-related charities that revealed the huge portion of funds the solicitors keep, I got curious. Is it only rescue squads and volunteer fire departments who are cutting these kinds of deals? It's not. We now have available in the DataSphere a database of over 4,000 contracts between solicitors and charities of all kinds and sizes, running from January 2000 to June 2007, and the pattern is the same. These contracts raised nearly $2.1 billion, according to the data from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which keeps the tallies. The solicitors kept about $1 billion of it. It didn't matter much if the charity was a local Civitan Club or UNICEF. November 7, 2007Roanoke's billions...Yes, I said billions.I'm a work-a-day guy, really. Blue-collar upbringing, no real wealth in the family. So, I confess a certain degree of ignorance about large amounts of money. Still, this number blew my mind. $5,413,786,000 That's the amount in deposits in banks in the Roanoke metropolitan statistical area for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2007, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC. That's right, there are three commas in that number. Billions. The number comes from a database of bank market share and deposits just posted in the DataSphere. The data also covers the Blacksburg-Christiansburg MSA, where there were $2,214,750,000 deposits in the same period. This is a small but interesting data set. You can see just how big each bank is in its market, and outside of it. You can see which monster bank holds a quarter or more of the deposits in your MSA. And you can see all the billions of bucks floating around here. Not much of it's mine, I promise, but when you add it all up, there seems to be plenty for each of us. If only we could distribute it a little more, um, evenly? |
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