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ES Exclusive:Fergasun Fail's at Debunking Bloomberg Stats


Fergasun

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ES Exclusive: Fergasun Eat's Crow

After doing a further examination of the census data from 2009, it appears that I can't back up my claims, and it's very plausible I am wrong and Bloomberg is correct. I only looked at the DC page, and did not look at the surrounding counties (ie. Arlington county has something like a $92k median household income). I could not find census data from 2010... although in 2009 it appeared Bay Area and DC were getting extremely close as far as household income goes.

I'm glad I'm not a professional, paid, blogger.... because this would've been embarrassing... I was damn sure that there was something funny going on with the numbers... it was... I didn't look at the full data set... (at least for 2009). Had I looked I would've seen that DC population is very low in terms of house hold income; but the surrounding counties more than make up for it.

Please disregard the bottom post, but I'll keep it for accuracy's sake.

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Here's a link to the story and the second paragraph:

The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046.
First of all, I don't know if Washington DC has jumped San Jose or not. According to Census stats on Wikipedia, the median household income in San Jose was ~$63k, and then median income in DC was ~$57k (I assume this is 2008, or 2009). However, I guarantee everyone reading this story that there is no way on heaven and earth that the median household income in the Washington metro area was $84,523. This would mean a jump of $17k over the most recent period. These stats do not pass the smell test. I can't even find the data over at the Census department... it appears Bloomberg made their own calculations. Nice job.

What makes me really angry is that this is getting passed around the media, and no one else has raised the "these numbers are really suspicious" flag. Way to go boneheads.

Hence, you're getting the scoop from Extremeskin's Fergasun that 1) There's something funny going on with these calculations. 2) The comparison of the 84k to the national median income of 50k is off by a huge amount.

You don't think Bloomberg is working hard to focus everyone's anger onto DC?

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No one will be angry once they find out that we now officially have the worst traffic in the nation (if Time magazine is to be believed and if how many hours you have to wait in traffic each year is a good measurement of how bad a city's congestion problem is).

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I'm not saying that the DC area hasn't suffered, because it has been relatively insulated (hence, I'm not sure it has leapfrogged San Jose or not). What I am saying is that:

1) Median household income surely ain't $84k (maybe they mean some other metric, but they quoted the median household income correctly for the $50k national average)

2) DC would've had to jump up $6k on San Jose to get there, it doesn't quite pass the smell test IMO.

The problem I have is that I've seen a ton of news outlets run with this story.

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I'm not saying that the DC area hasn't suffered, because it has been relatively insulated (hence, I'm not sure it has leapfrogged San Jose or not). What I am saying is that:

1) Median household income surely ain't $84k (maybe they mean some other metric, but they quoted the median household income correctly for the $50k national average)

2) DC would've had to jump up $6k on San Jose to get there, it doesn't quite pass the smell test IMO.

The problem I have is that I've seen a ton of news outlets run with this story.

I'd assume first that Wiki was wrong. DC metro area has most of the top 25 riches counties in the country. A few counties are over $100K.

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I'd assume first that Wiki was wrong. DC metro area has most of the top 25 riches counties in the country. A few counties are over $100K.

And the others are around San Jose and San Francisco.

I assume that what Fergusun is saying is that you can't use census data to measure San Jose but use the "Bloomburg estimate" to measure DC. Either compare census data to census data, or compare a Bloomburg analysis for San Jose to a Bloomburg analysis for DC. I don't know if he is correct, but that is what he appears to be saying.

I should add that it would not surprise me at all if DC has passed the Bay Area in household income. DC was already close, and it has not suffered in the economic downturn.

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OK.

I went back and looked at census data from the census page.

It appears plausible that the median household income of all the surrounding counties when added in will provide a boost.

I guess someone from the census leaked their reporting early to Bloomberg? Because the census still has the 2009 data.

Guess that's what happens when I didn't really have time to look through the data (and Bloomberg did not link to the data set they used to calculate this either... grrr...).

---------- Post added October-19th-2011 at 11:26 PM ----------

And the others are around San Jose and San Francisco.

I assume that what Fergusun is saying is that you can't use census data to measure San Jose but use the "Bloomburg estimate" to measure DC. Either compare census data to census data, or compare a Bloomburg analysis for San Jose to a Bloomburg analysis for DC. I don't know if he is correct, but that is what he appears to be saying.

I should add that it would not surprise me at all if DC has passed the Bay Area in household income. DC was already close, and it has not suffered in the economic downturn.

Sorry Destino, I was wrong. The DC data was only the DC proper. It did not include surrounding counties.

Here's Santa Clara County, CA, 2009: Median house hold income = $84,990

Here's Arlington County, VA, 2009: Median household income = $92,703

Alexandria City, $76,293

Fairfax County, $102,325

Loudon County, $114,200

...

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