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A growing number of North Carolinians are working at home. Since 2012, more than 200,000 North Carolina workers have reported working at home each year, about 4.7% of all state workers according to the American Community Survey data. Are teleworkers similar to individuals who don’t work at home? An examination of the last three years of ACS data—2012 through 2014—suggests they are not. Compared to all North Carolina workers, individuals who report working from home…
With the release of the 2010-2014 American Community Survey estimates last week, data users can now compare two non-overlapping five year time periods. One trend apparent in the data is the steady increase in educational attainment: between 2005-2009 and 2010-2014, the percentage of the population age 25 or older with a bachelor’s degree or higher increased in 1,000 of the nation’s 3,142 counties. Among North Carolinians ages 25 and older, 27.8% had a bachelor’s degree…
According to the 2014 American Community Survey, there were nearly 6.7 million adults ages 25 and older living in North Carolina. More than 1.9 million, or 29%, of these adults had attained a bachelor’s degree or higher. Across North Carolina’s 14 largest metropolitan regions, adult educational attainment varied significantly. Fewer than 20% of adults had completed a bachelor’s degree in three metropolitan regions: Rocky Mount (15%), Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton (18%), and Jacksonville (19%). At the other end…
“America’s shrinking cities are widely viewed to be suffering from a “brain drain”—the flight of highly educated residents to other, more hospitable locales—that is crippling these cities’ economic competitiveness. While such cities have many problems, brain drain as popularly conceived is not one of them. Indeed, the conventional wisdom on brain drain and declining human capital in shrinking U.S. metropolitan areas is largely a myth: brain gain, not drain, is the reality…. …even major U.S.…
The Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly publishes national unemployment rates by educational attainment for the highest degree attained for workers 25 and older. This analysis typically uses the Current Population Survey (CPS) data. Unfortunately, the CPS data are too small to provide high quality estimates for unemployment rates by educational attainment for individual states. Thankfully, there are multiple federal sources of statistical information available. The large sample size of the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual American…
In the mid- to late-twentieth century, suburbanization shifted population growth from urban areas to suburbs. In response, revitalization of the downtown core became the primary focus of many cities’ economic development plans. This is what Aaron Renn of the Urbanophile terms the “Old Donut” model: cities across the nation spent the past few decades trying to fill their downtown economic “holes” through billions of dollars in revitalization efforts, “ranging from stadiums to convention centers to…
North Carolina was largely untouched by the first two waves of immigration to the United States. Between 1840 and 1889, the U.S. received 14.3 million immigrants, the majority from Northern/Western European countries such as Germany, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Between 1890 and 1919, another 18.2 million arrived, mainly from Southern/Eastern European countries such as Italy, Russia, and Poland. Yet, in 1920, fewer than 10,000 of the nation’s 14.2 million immigrants lived in North Carolina.…
Statewide, the educational attainment of North Carolina’s adult population is similar to national patterns. Among North Carolina residents 25 and older: 17.8% have a bachelor’s degree 6.4% have a master’s degree 1.5% have a professional degree (e.g., MD or JD) 1.1% have a doctorate degree Within the state, North Carolina’s metropolitan areas have much higher concentrations of highly educated individuals. For example, 48% of adults in Wake and 40% of adults in Mecklenburg have a bachelor’s…
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