Iowa’s unemployment edged up to 6.7 percent in November from October’s 6.6 percent. The increase wasn’t statistically significant, so for practicality we can say it remained flat. However, the unemployment level isn’t too disconcerting, especially since Iowa is relatively low compared to other states. Iowa’s civilian labor force declined for the third straight month. In […]
iowa
Preview: Community College Finances – Tufte Scatterplot
I’ve actually shown this graph before at a State Board of Education meeting last year. I don’t think it was received as well as I had hoped. Many people were worried about the “complexity” of the diagram and I did hear some murmuring when I flipped to the slide. Below is the image of the […]
Preview: Five-year In-state Retention Rate
Ever get a letter from your alma mater asking what you’ve been up to since you graduated? That data is used to see how well the college has been doing. It’s especially important for public colleges to see if most graduates stick around. Ever send one back? No? Well, most don’t. But that’s a pain […]
REC Estimates for Fiscal Year 2011
The Revenue Estimating Conference published their December predictions for fiscal year 2011 (July 2009 – June 2010). We know the margin of error for REC net revenue predictions for the following year 3.9%–higher than the ideal margin of error. REC revised, downward, their prediction to $5.403 billion in net revenues. Given their historical accuracy it […]
Accuracy of Iowa’s Revenue Estimating Conference
A lot of people have been paying attention to the Revenue Estimating Conference (REC) the last two years. By law, REC meets three times a year–March, October, and December–to forecast tax revenues for the next fiscal year (between July and June). The legislature and governor use the estimates to determine expenditures…
Iowa Economy: Manufacturing Jobs in Iowa
Here mostly as a reminder. Source: Des Moines Register.
Fall Enrollment 2009 Presentation
The Iowa Department of Education released the Community College Enrollment Report for Fall 2009. Enrollment exceeded 100,000 students for the first time in the fall semester due to a dramatic year-to-year increase. Below is the presentation given to the state board and the full report can be found here. I’ll write later on the fall […]
Visualizing Transitions into the Workforce Presentation
This presentation was given at the MidAIR 2009 conference in Kansas City. An earlier post highlighted a poster associated with this project. This presentation highlights the methodology and reasoning behind the methodology. I’ve posted scripts and other materials to the project’s webpage.
In Depth: What We Said
Each year the Iowa Department of Education publishes The Annual Condition of Iowa’s Community Colleges. In 2008 I was a part of a major redesign which included adding meaningful narrative and emphasis on graphical representation of data. As we prepare the 2009 edition we are evaluating last years report. We had a few goals for […]