opportunityinsights / economictracker

Download data from the Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker — https://tracktherecovery.org/

Download ZIP file containing all OI Economic Tracker data

Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker Data Downloads

The Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker (https://tracktherecovery.org) combines anonymized data from leading private companies – from credit card processors to payroll firms – to provide a real-time picture of indicators such as employment rates, consumer spending, and job postings across counties, industries, and income groups.

All of the data displayed on the Economic Tracker can be downloaded here. In collaboration with our data partners, we are making this data freely available in order to assist in efforts to inform the public, policymakers, and researchers about the real-time state of the economy and the effects of COVID-19.

Anyone is welcome to use this data; we simply we ask that you:

1. List the name of the data provider(s) for the particular series you use.

2. Attribute our work by citing or linking to the accompanying paper and the Economic Tracker at https://tracktherecovery.org.

"The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Evidence from a New Public Database Built Using Private Sector Data", by Raj Chetty, John Friedman, Nathaniel Hendren, Michael Stepner, and the Opportunity Insights Team. November 2020. Available at: https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/tracker_paper.pdf

Reference Documents

Data Dictionary

The data dictionary lists each data file and variable available for public use, with short descriptions of the contents of each variable.

View Data Dictionary on Github

Download Data Dictionary as PDF

Data Documentation

The data documentation provides an overview of the data sources and processing applied to each data series.

View Data Documentation on Github

Download Data Documentation as PDF

Data Revisions

The data revisions document describes adjustments made to the posted data over time caused by changes in data processing or data sources.

View Data Revisions on Github

Download Data Revisions as PDF

Academic Paper with detailed methodology

The academic paper provides a detailed description of the data sources and processing methodology, along with economic analysis.

Download Academic Paper as PDF

Privacy and Integrity Statement

Opportunity Insights is committed to the rigorous protection of individual and business privacy and fidelity to academic integrity through independent, non-partisan research and policy analysis.

The data reflected in the Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker are aggregated, de-identified, and do not reveal information about specific individuals, transactions, or businesses. Opportunity Insights is a leader in ​developing privacy protection tools​ and methods, and all data releases follow rigorous protocols to protect individual privacy.

Each external organization that has contributed data to the Economic Tracker has done so with the explicit understanding that Opportunity Insights will use the contributed data in the Economic Tracker without precondition, subject to the data privacy standards set by data providers and any associated regulatory protections.

The Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker is a freely available public good. Opportunity Insights will never sell or monetize data and will not share the underlying data from the Economic Tracker with any third party (including any Opportunity Insights​​ funder​).

economictracker's Issues

Economic Tracker database- 2 questions - Affinity data and Earnings

Hello @michaelstepner ,

We have found the Economic Tracker database to be a useful resource. Thank you for making it available.

We have two quick questions pertaining the database:

• Can the debit and credit card transaction data (from Affinity Solutions) currently available as an index be made available in y/y growth or in level terms? This could be useful for cross-country comparisons.
• Some time in the summer, we noticed you had earnings data for low income workers (under the mnemonic “pay”), yet we seem to be unable to find it now. We are looking for the data in GitHub. Should we look somewhere else? Is it no longer available?

Thanks in advance for your help,
JT

"imputed_from_cz" meaning in Zearn data

What does this binary indicator mean in the Zearn dataset?

Replicating paper figures

It's not possible to replicate the figures comparing Affinity to MRTS (1b and 1c) in the paper from the publicly available data, is it? Thanks!

Womply data updates since 5 months ago

Good day. Are you still processing Womply updates? Last updates were 5 months ago, Thanks

Low Income Employment and Earnings Data

Hi, thanks for the updated data! May I know when would the low income employment and earnings data be updated? Thanks!

Economic Data Changes

Hi,

I see that the earlier file structure of Low Inc Earnings / Low Inc Emp files has gone, and now there is a single, consolidated file for each of national/state/county/city with fewer fields included in the file. Is there any documentation of this transition? Am I right in thinking that the emp fields that are common to both formats are the same data?

Thanks!

Low Inc Emp All Businesses / Low Inc Emp Small Businesses

Hi there,

Thanks for sharing the data!

For the Low Inc Emp All Businesses / Low Inc Emp Small Businesses data description. You may want to correct the description for the emp_inchigh. It's the same description for emp_incmiddle.

emp_incmiddle: Employment level for workers in the middle two quartiles of the national income distribution.
emp_inchigh: Employment level for workers in the middle two quartiles of the national income distribution.

Thanks!

Womply updates

Will you be updating the Womply Merchants and Revenue datasets moving forward? They haven't been updated since 8/21.

Employment Combined - National - Daily.csv - file missing 2 weeks data

The Employment Combined - National - Daily.csv has data only until 24/09 despite being updated 2 days ago. In fact the file has less data in it than its previous version which had data until 4 october.

Removal of Affinity daily data

I see that in a recent commit the daily Affinity spending data was removed. Was this intentional, and will this data be brought back?

Employment National Daily excel file is truncated at april and missing May data

Asking a question?
Please feel free to reach out to us at [email protected]
You will likely get a faster response by email. We will do our best
to answer issues posted here, but this repository is mostly automated.

Breakdown of spend_all at county level

Is there data available of breakdown of spend_all at the county level?

Lag in update from homebase and earning

Hello. First congrats on the excellent job of putting all this info together in a very user friendly way.

I would like to know why such a delay in getting information from Homebase and Earning databases. I am aware they release their info for non paying clients with a two-week delay, but the information in this page is older than that.

Thanks.