Monday, December 14, 2015

Where did the jobs in education go during the recession? They moved downtown...

More fun with education data...

Below are data from the National Center for Education Statistics.  I just highligted the data between 2005 and 2012 (last year available).

Much/Most of this tracks through the recession so the numbers are interesting to me.


Click on image to make a bit larger.

Through the budget cuts of the recession school level staffing, notably teachers, librarians, and counselors decreased in numbers, but Administrative staff "downtown" increased (probably lots of the "support staff" on the right side were downtown staff as well).

If you do the additions and subtractions you pretty end up with, not a net loss of jobs in education, but a relative status quo.  School level jobs (with exception of principals) just morphed on over to the administration offices downtown.

Number of Students at each grade level 2005-2014

Having fun with data and working on my excel skills which are at the most basic level.

I was looking at different categories of in the Census Bureau's "American FactFinder" (good stuff for research purposes!) and came across surprising data on the number of students in grades 9-12 from 2005 through 2014 (only years available).

I created some bar charts. Becareful in reading the vertical (Y-axis).  They  do not start at 0 but at the lowest millionth that the category falls under. Perhaps not good technique, but...


The vertical axis (left hand scale) starts at 16,000,000. Notice the rise in 2006 then a steady fall until we get back where we started (the actual numbers or on the horizontal axis below the corresponding year.  I put the actual enrollment numbers along the  bottom of the horizontal axis for reference.

Starting in 2012 the number flatlines. No growth in the secondary students in 10 years.

How about the younger grades?


No growth there either. Pretty flat from 2010 on.



Now we are getting somewhere. Grades 1-4 show a growth from 2005 to 2014 of 849,262 or 5.46%



Kindergarten has 236,792 or 5.97% more little ones.



Total enrollment K-12 increased 1,088,579 or 2.05%.
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