Report Release: Roanoke, Virginia

The Council of Community Services, in partnership with the United Way of Roanoke Valley, just released their second annual Roanoke Regional Community Indicators Report (PDF).

From their website:

The report updates key household economic indicators, presentations of valuable data that show change over time, for eight jurisdictions in the Roanoke/Alleghany Region. The report tracks the original 39 indicators and adds two key education indicators for a total of 41 indicators. Job related, education, income and asset related, housing, public assistance, low income and other categories of indicators are included in this updated, data rich, 2009 Edition.

The Council of Community Services is now tracking a limited number of economic indicators on a monthly basis for the Roanoke/Alleghany Region. This report, 2009 Economic Indicators: Monthly Trends (PDF) provides valuable indicator data for the eight jurisdictions in the Roanoke Region. The data covers the period from January to June 2009.

They've done a nice job of selecting indicators on a regional level and reporting them for the region and for each of the eight jurisdictions the region covers. For policy-makers and planners, this is an important tool for their region. They also do a nice job of taking advantage of the new ACS 3-year estimates for smaller-population jurisdictions. If you're not using this tool, you may want to check out how Roanoke can capture important information that was simply not available before outside of the decennial census.

Take a look!

(Read more about the report at The Roanoke Times.)