Data Description
The data for this report comes from the US Census Bureau and from the The National Historical Geographic Information System from the University Minnesota, which repackages data from the US Census Bureau for easier use.
Any data from the American Community Survey represents an average of the last five years of data collected for that measure.
Sources Used
U. S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates: Comparison Profiles 5-Year, 2020, accessed June 2, 2026, http://api.census.gov/data/2020/acs/acs5.
U. S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates: Comparison Profiles 5-Year, 2020, accessed June 2, 2026, http://api.census.gov/data/2010/acs/acs5.
U. S. Census Bureau Decennial Census: Redistricting Data (PL 94-171), 2020, accessed June 2, 2026, http://api.census.gov/data/2020/dec/pl.
U. S. Census Bureau Decennial SF1, 2010, accessed June 2, 2026, http://api.census.gov/data/2010/dec/sf1.
U. S. Census Bureau Tn_od_main_JT00_2020, LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics, 8.3, 2020, accessed June 2, 2026, https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/lodes/.
U. S. Census Bureau 2020 TIGER/Line Shapefiles (Machine Readable Data Files), U.S. Department of Commerce, 2020, accessed June 2, 2026, https://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/index.php.
IPUMS NHGIS, University of Minnesota, www.nhgis.org
Data Management
High level description: ACS and Census column labels were cleaned to standardize them and prepare them for analysis and place names were changed to a more readable form. The data was subset to only those counties in ETDD’s counties. Data was aggregated where needed to form Place-level and County-level data- in some cases this required combining place-level data for places that are in multiple counties (e.g. Oak Ridge).
Tiger files were used to get the area of each municipality and county. The area was converted into square miles and combined with the census data population to get population density. The data was subset to only those counties in ETDD’s counties.
IPUMS data was subset, the column names were changed, and changes from year to year were calculated and added to the data.
LODES data was combined at the county level and the crosswalk was used to add the correct label for each county.
Packages used
Please note: this list is currently incomplete and will be updated at a later date
Kyle Walker and Matt Herman Tidycensus: Load US Census Boundary and Attribute Data as ’Tidyverse’ and ’Sf’-Ready Data Frames (2026), https://walker-data.com/tidycensus/.
Greg Freedman Ellis et al. Ipumsr: An r Interface for Downloading, Reading, and Handling IPUMS Data (2026), https://tech.popdata.org/ipumsr/.