Introducing the Ohio New Establishment Dynamics Data

Joel A. Elvery, Ellen Cyran, Cleveland State University

Data Shop

Data Shop, a department of Cityscape, presents short articles or notes on the uses of data in housing and urban research. Through this department, the Office of Policy Development and Research introduces readers to new and overlooked data sources and to improved techniques in using well-known data. The emphasis is on sources and methods that analysts can use in their own work. Researchers often run into knotty data problems involving data interpretation or manipulation that must be solved before a project can proceed, but they seldom get to focus in detail on the solutions to such problems. If you have an idea for an applied, data-centric note of no more than 3,000 words, please send a one-paragraph abstract to david.a.vandenbroucke@hud.gov for consideration.

The Ohio New Establishment Dynamics (O-NED) data set tracks the number of establishments that first started employing people between the second quarter of 1997 and the first quarter of 2008 and measures the employment and payroll data for these new establishments. O-NED enables researchers to measure the growth trends of cohorts of new establishments for up to 5 years after the cohort’s birth. These data are the first publicly available data that document the growth rates of new establishments at the substate level. The finest unit of geography O-NED measures is a county. This article describes how O-NED is constructed and defines the variables included in the data. It closes with two examples of how researchers can use the data.