Career and Technical Education

I was glad to hear this week that Texas Comptroller Susan Combs is making $5 million in scholarship money available for career and technical education (Career and Technical Scholarship Fund). Spend a few minutes with folks like Mike Midgley at Austin Community College or Michael Bettersworth at Texas State Technical College and you’ll quickly understand why CTE needs more attention. It’s a vital part of what makes states and regions economically competitive. CTE is also a pathway to higher wage jobs and better standards of living for thousands of people—young and not so young—each year. Corporate relocations and expansions may get the headlines and the glory in this profession, but workforce competitiveness is the real story that separates leading regions from the rest of the pack.

We got new 2009Q3 data on industries and occupations this week from one of our providers, EMSI. I’ll let the numbers do the rest of the talking about the importance of CTE:

· 71 percent of jobs in the Austin-Round Rock region require, on average, less than a bachelor’s degree.
· 70 percent of net new jobs expected between 2009 and 2019 will require less than a bachelor’s degree.
· Jobs requiring on-the-job training only (i.e. no postsecondary degree of any kind) pay an average of $15.11 per hour. Jobs requiring an associate’s degree pay an average of $22.31 per hour.
· Registered nurse is the fastest growing occupation in Austin-Round Rock requiring an associate’s degree. EMSI’s economists predict that we’ll see a net gain of approximately 3,200 registered nurse jobs by 2019. Add in turnover and retirements and that number grows to 4,700.
· Many of the jobs that contribute to Austin-Round Rock’s competitive advantage in specialized workforce require less than a bachelor’s degree. Examples include Electronic Engineering Techs ($21.15 per hour), Semiconductor Processors ($17.71), Industrial Engineering Techs ($23.24), and Environmental Science and Protection Techs ($22.03).
· 61 percent of net new green jobs expected between 2009 and 2019 will require less than a bachelor’s degree.

Finally, I sat through a pretty good training on Career Clusters (Achieve Texas) at our statewide COG meeting last week. For those of you working in the secondary school system, or the parents among you with children in K-12, we have some helpful information for you, too. Go check out the list of Career Clusters and Career Pathways on the Achieve Texas website and then come back to this email. Here’s a list of the 16 Career Clusters ranked by expected annual job openings in Austin-Round Rock between 2009 and 2019:

1. Business, Management, and Administration
2. Marketing, Sales, and Service
3. Hospitality and Tourism
4. Transportation, Distribution, and Logistics
5. Human Services
6. Health Science
7. Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources
8. Finance
9. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)
10. Architecture and Construction
11. Education and Training
12. Arts, A/V Technology, and Communications
13. Government and Public Administration
14. Information Technology
15. Law, Public Safety, Corrections, and Security
16. Manufacturing

Brian Kelsey

2008 American Community Survey Released

If you haven’t heard yet or if perhaps you've forgotten, new Census data in the form of the American Community Survey gives covered areas a fresh look at socio-economic and demographic characteristics each year. The Austin American-Statesman's article, "State's rate of uninsured was highest in the nation, census shows," covers some of this new data released today.

Not all of the American Community Survey data was released today. Most of the single year estimates covering areas with 65,000 or more were released, however, certain economic data covering poverty, food stamp recipients, and family income are being held back until September 29th due to some errors. And all three year estimates for areas of 20,000 or more will be released on October 27th.

To mark this release, we’ve put together a couple of examples comparing single year estimates for the Austin metro region. For more about this Census release, visit their press release.

Median Household Income
The median household income for the Austin metro area has been increasing over the past few years according to the ACS estimates. The data in the chart below shows both the estimate (in blue) and the upper and lower confidence interval (in yellow) from 2005 - 2008. Although the increase from 2006 to 2007 appears to be significant (about $2,500), it is important to note that the increase was still within the margin of error in the survey. But looking over several years of ACS data, the trend does show a statistically significant increase in the Median Household Income. For example, the lower confidence interval for 2008 is higher than the upper confidence interval for 2006. Data is inflation adjusted to 2008 dollars.

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Median Home Value
Likewise, the median home value (median value of owner occupied housing units) is also on a steady upward trend from 2005 to 2008. Despite the fact that the ACS estimate in 2006 was lower than the 2005 estimate, the change was still well within the margin of error of the survey. However, the increase from 2006 to 2007 was greater than the margin of error.

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Median Gross Rent

It is also not surprising that the median gross rent has been on the increase as well. The increase from 2005 to 2006 was greater than the margin of error. And overall, the median gross rent is at least $40 higher in 2008 than it was in 2005 (inflation was adjusted).

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Below is a distribution of renter occupied housing units by gross rent category. There is a definite increase in the number of renters in certain categories such as $1,000 to $1,249, but it is a little difficult to quantify the change occurring because it is impossible to adjust the data for inflation beyond the adjustment that the Census Bureau does to the current year of the estimate. It is likely that a lot of the change is due to new units in those price categories.

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Stay tuned for future ACS releases.

Chris Ramser

Life Sciences

The Austin American-Statesman ran an interesting article today on venture capital activity in the life sciences sector (Biotech industry tries to shrug off setbacks). Definitions vary for what exactly belongs to the life sciences/biotechnology sector, but its footprint in Austin-Round Rock may surprise you. We currently have approximately 1,300 establishments and 52,500 jobs in the life sciences cluster, up from 43,000 jobs in 2002 (22%). Forecasters predict that our life sciences cluster could grow by another 14,000 jobs (27%) by 2019. (Source: EMSI). Brian Kelsey

Data Tools

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we've been working with the National Association of Development Organizations (NADO) on a training curriculum for economic developers interested in learning more about data analysis and regional strategies. We pilot tested the workshop with the Michigan Association of Regions in July and we did another run at NADO's annual conference in Chicago earlier this month.

Scroll down to Professional and Organizational Development and look for the Know Your Region presentations on the NADO website. It's difficult to follow PowerPoint slides after the fact, but you'll be able to find footnotes and examples for all the data tools we discussed. If you want help finding data for your community, let us know. Brian Kelsey

State Rankings on Health Insurance Coverage, Poverty and Income

On Thursday, the Census Bureau released estimates of poverty, income, and health insurance coverage at the state level and several local newspapers have stories reporting that Texas is again at the top of the list when it comes to the highest percentage of uninsured. See (Austin American-Statesman and Austin Business Journal articles).

Texas also had the sixth highest poverty rate at 16.3% and the thirteenth lowest median household income at $46,853 from 2006-2008 according to the data released. The data comes from the Current Population Survey (CPS), which is generally collected monthly with an annual data release of state level data. Socioeconomic data for smaller areas like cities will be coming out through the American Community Survey data (ACS) releases planned on September 22nd and October 27th.

In the meantime, here are a couple of thematic maps of the state level CPS data. We'll highlight some of the ACS data as it gets released.

Health Insurance Coverage
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Poverty Rate

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Median Household Income

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To view more data from this release, visit the Census Bureau's site.

Chris Ramser