About Towncharts.com

Towncharts.com provides information and data about every geographic location in the United States including city, county, zip code, state and more. The information is beautifully portrayed in clear charts and has simple navigation links and a quick search box. Towncharts.com provides information that is collated from a large variety of government agencies and public data sources and we hope is the most useful and most valuable information available.

On Towncharts.com you will find useful information about cities, zip codes, counties, states and more such as:

Population

The most recent population overall as well as interesting breakdowns by age, gender, race, and many more.

Demographics

Breaking down the population by the obvious categories of age/gender/race but also marriage status, children, birth rates, families, singles, poverty, citizenship, ancestory, languages and much more.

Local Economy

Important information about local economies including data about individuals and family household earnings. Also, occupation/job data, people employed by industry and by job classification. Cost of living data such as indices of food, fuel, healthcare and more. Unemployment rates and information as well as those employmed, labor force participation, self employment, commuting time, and more.

Housing

Hard to find information about the cost of renting and owning in each geographic area including detail such as who customarily pays for utilities in the various rental markets. Other information about the composition of homes in the area, year built, and more.

Education

Valuable information about the percent of the population who have graduated from high school or college as well as fields of study in college and graduate school. Additionally, data is provided on schools that are in close proximity to the geographic area.

Healthcare

Difficult to find information about healthcare insurance coverage as well as the percentage change in insurance coverage in those geographic areas. Type of healthcare coverage, penetration of Obamacare/Affordable Care Act (ACA). Includes important demographic breakouts of who has and does not have healthcare insurance such as children without healthcare insurance, population by income bracket and more. Finally, there is also information about specific healthcare providers that are located in the geographic area such as hospitals. Quality of care and service metrics for the healthcare providers is also provided where it's available.

Towncharts.com brings a wealth of publicly available government agency data to users and updates that data on a regular basis. Consumers as well as a wide range of business users will value easy access to this data and information already in easy-to-understand graphical formats. The data sources used on Towncharts.com are drawn from an array of publically available data sources from a variety of government agencies. Although this data is readily available from these government agencies it can often be challenging. You may have found this to be the case and came to this website as an alternative.

Why use Towncharts.com instead of the original government agency that publishes the data sources?

Integrated Data Sources

Often government agencies will provide data only on a particular topic area that the agency is tasked to follow. As a result, they do not typically integrate data together from different government agencies. Having logically related data together in one location is helpful and time saving.

Difficulty Obtaining Data

Sometimes the data available from government agencies can be challenging to obtain even though online software systems might also be provided. These systems can be hard to use, confusing, and/or time consuming to get the data you need. At worst, the data is only provided via a large and potentially complicated data file that will require download, conversion, analysis, and graphing.

Comparison Data

Generally users will need to compare one location to others in the area and especially to state and U.S. benchmarks to understand and gain perspective on a particular metric. Often this can be time consuming even when the government agency provides some type of online software system. Towncharts.com provides each geographic location with other locations in proximity. Additionally, relevant aggregate comparisons are also shown such as the national median value, state medians and a large metropolitan area value (such as a Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CSA.)

Easy Geographic Navigation

Often easy-to-use navigation is not available from the online software system at the government agency. Towncharts.com provides a simple hypertext linked navigation system that enables you to logically move from one geographic location to another. This includes moving from a city to a zip code, county, another city, the state or national level.

Clear Graphical Formats

Often data is provided by government agencies only in a tabular format or an inflexible or hard to understand graphical format. The data on Towncharts.com is provided in easy-to-understand graphical formats. Additionally, when tables are provided on Towncharts.com most of the time it will include a helpful embedded bar graph in the table to help quickly assess the magnitude of the values provided.

Quick Data Access

Often the public data from a government agency is buried deep within data dictionaries and user interfaces. It can be challenging and time consuming to find and extract the information you need.

Text Interpretation

Towncharts also includes helpful interpretive text along the left hand side margin which can be used to simply read what is being provided in the charts and graphs.

Data Sources

Towncharts.com includes a wide variety of publically available data sources and is also always on the lookout for more information that would enhance the user experience. Our Data sources generally update their data once a year but can also provide updates monthly and sometimes quarterly. Additionally, some data is updated only on a less than yearly basis.

The data source and year of update is always provided for each chart. To see the exact data source and year of the data displayed simply put your mouse pointer over the "i" icon which is located in the upper right hand corner of each and every chart.

Decennial Census

From the Census Bureau and provided every 10 years.

American Community Survey

Also from the Census Bureau but updated once a year. This data is based on the Decennial Census but updated via survey sampling on an annual basis.

Department of Labor

The Department of Labor estimates a variety of economic indicators including employment levels.

Census Bureau International Database

The Census Bureau also compiles this annual database of statistics for select countries in the world.

CIA World Fact Book

An annual reference of key statistics for the United States and other countries.

Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)

This arm of the Federal Government is concerned with healthcare and provides data about providers of healthcare and other healthcare services in the United States.

More information about Towncharts data sources.

Do you know any other great data sources for Towncharts.com? Let us know!

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