Free Census Data for Smart Business Strategies
Whether you are looking to start a new business, expand an existing one, or simply looking to make certain adjustments within your business strategies, the US Census Bureau offers countless amounts of data regarding your community that can help you out. More often than not, consumer data for businesses come at a charge supplied by corporations like Nielsen or IRI, however, the Census data is absolutely free! Demographic and economic data starting from the national level, all the way down to specific district information, is available for anyone to access at the click of a button. Let’s go over some of the basics so you can get started searching for information.
How to access data:
Let’s say you would like to access income levels within your county (Miami-dade).
Go to data.census.gov in order to search the Census database.
- Use the search button to look up specific data, for example, income levels.
- The search will bring up different types of information regarding your search for income levels. For this example, we will click on the first result, explore data, in order to access median household income in the United States.
- The results are the median household income for the entire United States, however, we would like to condense our search to show only Miami-Dade county. In order to do so, we have to click the “customize table” button at the top right of the screen.
- By clicking on the geography button we can choose to filter the data by county and enter both the state (Florida) and the county we wish to look at (Miami-Dade).
- Once you hit the close button you will see displayed the household income data for Miami-Dade county.
Tip: You might want to dive deeper into the information regarding the county for example. By clicking the map button you can access additional information regarding the location chosen which includes things like population, ethnicities, employment, business counts, and several other data that might be useful.
Now that you know the steps in order to access the Census data, you should take advantage of this opportunity. As mentioned previously, consumer data usually has to be purchased, and having this free source of information is incredibly useful. By having access to specific information regarding your community, whether it be demographic or economic data, you are one step closer to making smart business strategies!
