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Businesses may lose census survey
The American Community Survey from the Census Bureau has been a useful business tool for decades. Washington budget-cutters want to ax it.
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David Brancaccio: Budget cutters in Washington are taking aim at the Census Bureau. Specifically, a spending plan passed by the House that would put a stop to a yearly survey of three million households.
The American Community Survey is a trove of data for government planners -- and as Marketplace's John Dimsdale reports, for businesses as well.
John Dimsdale: The American Community Survey reveals the median incomes in Latino households in Pima County, Ariz., jumped nearly $10,000 between 2009 and 2010.
David French: They can crunch this data to know where growth is happening, how its happening.
David French at the National Retail Federation says growth statistics can determine where new stores get built.
French: Without it a lot of businesses, not just retailers, but homebuilders would really be flying blind about where investment decisions in the next five or 10 years need to be made.
The survey can help manufacturers target their goods, says Maurine Haver of Haver Analytics.
Maureen Haver: Or also for other sorts of businesses to figure out what kind of workers, at what educational level, are in a particular area.
Budget cutters argue the survey is too expensive. But businesses are lobbying to save the data from the budget ax.
In Washington, I'm John Dimsdale for Marketplace.
Survey always brings key insights visible ... but leaders afraid of it. Also we need a simpler survey to respond last time i received census survey form was pissed due to its complex structure. Why can't they just use something like this
http://www.surveytool.com/patient-satisfaction-survey/
Seems to me, if this intrusive, somewhat ridiculous, and suspect info is so important to business and government, then they ought to pay citizens to cough it up. Census mandates answers, but lets folks estimate some answers; and when is that ever validated as accurate?
Rather than demanding answers on pain of fines, doesn't the government spend enough that they could afford to pay for answers?
Don't large corporations that benefit from this coerced data have enough profits to pay us?
And why isn't anyone asking these questions?
