MI SUM: Mapping Out U.S. Economic Growth and Employment Data by County

[Eric Frost / HR and Associates, Inc.]

I was looking for econ growth and employment data by county for the US a last week for a mapping project and said I'd summarize...   +The employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is wonderful!   You can download about 240 MB of text files that have the data for EVERY month going back more than 10 years for several levels of geography including county. This is at: http://stats.bls.gov/lauhome.htm  go to FTP | Local Area Unemployment Statistics.   +The Bureau of Economic Analysis has data at: http://www.bea.doc.gov   They have Gross State Product and income data by county for 1977 to 1997 (1998 #'s to be released later this year). You could probably use the Gross State Product and fudge it into a Gross County Product using the income data...(maybe even use the census state pop projections to extend the data...census.gov)   So far everything's free.   Another source with all this data as well as many other variables at the county level can also be purchased from a research outfit at http://www.rfa.com ... go to Products | Forecast Services | RFA Forecast Data Buffet | Counties. I think their salesperson said they compile this quarterly.   The RFA stuff is expensive but may be a bargain depending on your needs.   Hope this is of use to someone, sorry it is off-topic on the MapInfo list...(though MapInfo does have proportionately more business users ?) I'll look for a business geographics list.