EMSI is pleased to announce the release of our official Fall 2008 dataset on Monday, October 13th. Our two-week “beta” preview of the data has been very well-received by our users, and we have gotten some good feedback. This official release is very similar to the initial beta release, incorporating only a few minor updates. As usual, all users will be automatically updated to the new dataset, unless they specifically opt out on the notification page which appears the first time they log in after the release.
Considering the rapid changes in our economy in the past year, we have made two important enhancements to our methodology in order to improve the timeliness of our data:
Current Employment Statistics (CES) now informs current-year estimates. Until now, the time lag inherent in our main data sources as well as our own biannual data release schedule meant that the current year of data (now 2008) was always projected, and for Spring data releases the most recent year of data was always a partial projection. We’re now filling that gap by using CES, which is released monthly with month-old data. While CES does not contain nearly the industry or geographic detail of other sources (or EMSI’s final data), it is still very useful to benchmark our more detailed current-year projections. This also enables us to use some hard data from the current year for future projections. Given the economic turmoil we’ve seen so far in 2008, you will find that many of the major differences between the current and new data releases (for current and future figures) are a result of these changes.
Nearly all of our major state and federal data sources have been updated since our last release. We have included these updates and they will affect 2006-2008 data as well as future-year projections.
These significant updates have made EMSI data more up-to-date, practical, and valuable than ever. We recommend that all users re-run any recent reports to see how the latest changes in the labor market have affected their local areas.
Also, remember that EMSI gives users the option of reverting to the previous dataset—now the Spring 2008 Version 2 release. (We do this so that users can complete long-term ongoing projects using a single consistent dataset.) This option is found on the user account preferences page, which is accessible under the “Home” tab in Strategic Advantage.