(Business Resource Specialist Mollie Kaylor covers southwestern New Hampshire for the New Hampshire Division of Economic Development. This is an occasional feature highlighting our team’s work with industries and communities. Contact us to connect with your regional business resource specialist. – Ed.)
Municipal and economic development folks are familiar with this scenario: Searching for valuable data to include on that strategic plan or grant application or report quantifying the impact of a new business in the community.
Data is everywhere, but the challenge is finding the right data for your project.
The Division of Economic Development can help. We are subscribed to the economic modeling resource, Emsi, which creates comprehensive labor market information and economic analysis from over 90 federal, state and private sources.
As one of five business resource specialists within the division, I’m out every week meeting with companies and communities about tools they need, including Emsi.
I recently worked with one of the towns in my region as it developed a strategic plan to help established businesses expand and to attract new businesses. Reliable demographic and economic data was needed at all levels – local, regional and national – to determine the trends on which to focus. Working together, we inputted our parameters and were able to generate several Emsi reports containing the best data for this project.
We began by using the Economic Overview report, which we ran several times, each time defining the geographical area differently – U.S., state, county and town. This report provides helpful general information, such as demographic data, the number of jobs by industry, educational information, GRP by industry, import/export by costs by industry, and an overview of growing and declining occupations.
The next reports further explored the seven key southwest New Hampshire industries, identified in the FY 16-17 NH Economic Development Strategic Plan. We ran several industry specific reports, including the Industry Snapshot and Compare Industry across Regions information. All reports, including the comparative report, can be customized, so we were able to define the regions we needed to view. Among the helpful data elements this report provides are projections of the number of overall jobs in the industry, as well as the top occupations.
Another interesting report we used was the Regional Demand for Industry, which identifies the demand for specific industries and whether the demand is met in the region. Finally, we ran a couple different supply chain reports for a look at specific industries’ purchases and sales figures; this supply chain data can be very helpful in identifying potential businesses for the area.
This example includes just a few of the many custom reports our team can work with you to generate. Please don’t hesitate to contact our office if you have a project in mind, or if you would just like some additional information about this useful tool.
Mollie Kaylor
Business Resource Specialist
NH Division of Economic Development