City of Charlottesville Office of Economic Development.
The City of Charlottesville Office of Economic Development publishes quarterly economic indicator data to educate potential business owners, current business owners, and citizens on the economic climate in the city.
Develop a more efficient process to help communicate key economic indicators for the City of Charlottesville in a visually appealing way that’s easily and quickly updatable.
The process of creating the dashboard can be very time intensive and isn’t necessarily an efficient use of time. Originally created as a Word document, it has been updated several times to have a more visual appeal. However, because it is limited to a printed document, there is no current ability to show longer trends, only the several past quarters.
The economic indicators are included in the OED’s datatool, a compilation of fact sheets used to help promote Charlottesville as a business-friendly community and to share with business owners and community members.
| Data Point | Details |
|---|---|
| LABOR FORCE | collected from VEC, data is usually one quarter behind current quarter |
| AT-PLACE EMPLOYMENT | collected from Virginia Employment Commision (VEC). Data usually lags 2-3 quarters behind current quarter https://data.virginialmi.com |
| VACANCY RATES | collected twice a year (Jan. & July) by OED |
| HOUSING SALES | collected from CAAR quarterly reports http://www.caar.com/ |
| CONSUMER PRICE INDEX | collected from BLS https://www.bls.gov/cpi/ |
| TAXABLE SALES COLLECTED | collected from City’s Finance Department, quarterly number is average of three taxes - Sales, Meals, Lodging (combined). - Internal, gathered from Excel spreadsheet |
| TOURISM | proprietary data collected from Smith Travel Reports. Have permission to show only aggregate data. Internal, gathered from Excel spreadsheet |