For Immediate Release: January 14, 2010
DBEDT News Release 10-02

HONOLULU—A free census workshop, Exploring Hawai‘i's Abundant Economic Data, will be held on February 17, 2010 in Honolulu. It is designed to teach participants about the 2007 Economic Census as well as other business data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Economic Census data are available every five years. The 2007 data are the latest and the Census Bureau began releasing the data in late 2009.

The next Economic Census will be for 2012 and data will be available in late 2014.

This workshop is being co-sponsored by the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism (DBEDT) and the U.S. Census Bureau.

"The Economic Census data provides solid benchmarks for our economic activity and we need to understand the structure of our economy and how it is changed over time," said DBEDT Director Theodore E. Liu. "By understanding the census data and the changing demographics of our population, we can better plan our economic and business development strategies as well as determine how to use our limited resources in the most efficient manner."

The primary presenter for this workshop will be Paul Zeisset, special assistant in the U.S. Census Bureau's Economic Planning and Coordination Division. Zeisset, who last brought his expertise in census data to Hawai‘i over 10 years ago, directs marketing activities for the 2007 Economic Census and is involved in communicating the availability and use of Census Bureau data about businesses to the public. Zeisset has developed a wide variety of data and reference material on the web and in print and has also authored numerous articles about data use and the North American Industry Classification System.

Workshop participants will learn about the range of data relating to businesses that is available from the U.S. Census Bureau. This includes both the Economic Census data which are released every five years and annual data such as the County Business Patterns and the Statistics of U.S. Businesses.

Experienced users will learn about new features of the census data, comparability issues to consider when doing trend analysis, and qualifications of the data that they should be aware of. The Census Bureau is no longer publishing these data in print or as PDFs, so gaining skills in accessing the data on the Internet has become much more important.

Each participant will learn to retrieve Hawai‘i data at a computer station as part of a series of structured exercises designed to develop their ability to find the data they need in their own work.

There are a limited number of seats and registration will be on the first-come, first-served basis. Participants may sign up for either the morning or the afternoon workshop. Both sessions cover the same workshop information.

This workshop is for individuals with some computer and census data knowledge. Links to the Census Bureau's economic data for Hawai‘i may be found on our DBEDT Internet site at: http://hawaii.gov/dbedt/info/census/econo2007.

For more information, contact:
Naomi Akamine
Research & Economic Analysis Division
Phone: (808) 586-2486
Email: nakamine@dbedt.hawaii.gov

Lois Hamaguchi
DBEDT
Phone: (808) 587-3875
Email: lhamaguchi@dbedt.hawaii.gov