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Economic Data

Another useful thing to know is how many optometrists there are in your community and how well they are doing. Again, you can get a lot of this information from governmental sources. For example, the Census Bureau not only collects and compiles demographic data, but also gathers detailed information about the U.S. economy every five years in the form of the Economic Census.

While the last Economic Census was completed in 2007, a lot of the data hasn't been analyzed yet. We'll be working with 2002 data. You can link to the Economic Census from the American Fact Finder that we used to access the 2000 Census.  Here you will find # of establishments, receipts/revenue, payroll, and # of employees for "Office of optometrists".

A lot of information about industries and professions is organized according to NAICS codes. That's why it's useful to remember that the NAICS code for "Offices of optometrists" is 62132.  This is a subgroup found under the more general "Health care & social assistance" NAICS.  Knowing this, you can also link to the NAICS 62132 Industry Statistics Sampler, which is another version of the data we were just working with.

County Business Patterns is an annual publication providing much of the same but is available up through 2005.  However, only state, county and metropolitan statistical area data is offered.

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