The demographics of an area can play an important role when deciding where to locate a business. If a business is trying to sell products mainly to college-age students, they would want to locate in an area with a lot of people that age. Or maybe a business is offering a service to underserved communities and wants to find an area with a lot of single-parent households.
The US Census Bureau is the main source for demographic data in the United States. They collect lots of data about people, business and industry, health, education and more.
US Census Bureau at data.census.gov
- Search for State, County, Metropolitan Statistical Area, Zip code data:
- Go to data.census.gov
- Click on "Advanced Search"
- Click on "Geography" in the left hand column
- Click on the type of geographic location you want to find (i.e. county, zip code, MSA, etc)
- Drill down until locating the geographic location. You can select more than one area at a time.
- As you select items, they will be added to the filters in the left-hand column.
- Once geographies are selected, move on to select "Topics." I would recommend only choosing one or two related topics at a time.
- I would not make selections for "Codes", "Survey", or "Years" for this particular project.
- Finally, when all search filters have been selected, click on the "Search" button in the bottom-right corner.
- A list of "Tables" will appear that have data similar to what you have selected.
- When you click on a Table, it will populate the right portion of the screen with the topical data for those geographies.
- Note: there are very tiny scroll bars along the bottom and right side that let you navigate the data. You can also download or print the data.
