With funding from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, Argonne National Laboratory’s National Economic Research and Resilience Center hosts the National Economic Resilience Data Explorer (NERDE) and the Economic Development Capacity Index (EDCI). NERDE consolidates information and data on economic distress, demographics, the existence and emergence of industry clusters, and COVID-19 impacts to local economies, while the EDCI uses publicly available data to assess critical elements that contribute to a county’s overall economic development capacity. This webinar provided an overview and live demonstration of these tools to show how they can be utilized to support your CEDS and other regional planning efforts.

Speakers:

Iain Hyde, Director, National Economic Research & Resilience Center, Argonne National Laboratory 
Ross Alexander, Research Analyst, National Economic Research & Resilience Center, Argonne National Laboratory 
Carmie Burdi, Manager, Data & Analytics, National Economic Research & Resilience Center, Argonne National Laboratory 
Greg Guibert, Senior Economic Resilience Analyst, National Economic Research & Resilience Center, Argonne National Laboratory
(Moderator) Brett Schwartz, Associate Director, NADO Research Foundation

Tipsheet: NERDE and EDCI Tools for CEDS Development

The global COVID-19 pandemic sent economic shockwaves around the world. Economic distress, employment, deployment of basic goods and services, and access to the internet are just a few examples of impacts felt by regions, both urban and rural. Through partnership with the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA), the Argonne National Laboratory developed two resources in response to the pandemic to aid Economic Development Districts (EDD) on their road to economic recovery.

National Economic Resilience Data Explorer

In collaboration with EDA, Argonne developed the National Economic Resilience Data Explorer (NERDE) to help users analyze local economic resilience and recovery. First released in January 2022, the NERDE tool consolidates information and data on economic distress criteria, COVID-19 impacts on local economies, and the existence and emergence of industry clusters at the county and EDD level, updated quarterly as new EDDs are created. The dashboard’s main page tracks near real-time impacts on local economies and provides recovery insights over time. It also provides a regional perspective on economic health and vitality, allowing community leaders to design and implement projects more strategically.

NERDE has components that regions can utilize to help support their Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) or other economic development efforts:

• Key indicators highlighting special needs and economic distress.
• Demographics using population signals from the U.S. Census.
• Workforce using a composition of labor force and unemployment.
• Economy showing gross domestic product (GDP), GDP growth, and employment concentration by industry.
• Industry tells the story of industry concentration within a county or an EDD. Users may analyze employment, establishment, and wages through the provided location quotient
• Risk and Resilience providing information about risks to and resilience of regional economies.
• COVID-19 highlighting ongoing impacts on counties, EDDs, and states.

Economic Development Capacity Index

The Economic Development Capacity Index (EDCI) tool was also developed through a partnership between EDA and Argonne to help users analyze a county’s overall economic development capacity, strength, and opportunities for investment. The launch of the EDCI dashboard follows the successful January debut of NERDE. EDCI helps regions measure a community’s capacity relative to the rest of the nation and inform planning, regional strategy, spending priorities, and how to best allocate federal funding. The new EDCI dashboard allows focuses on county-level information to reveal an area’s baseline of economic development readiness.  More than 53 economic indicators are used to generate EDCI outputs to help determine a region’s economic development capacities compared to the rest of the nation across five major capacity areas:

• Financial – g., local government vulnerability index value and SBA loans per establishment
• Human Capital – e.g., income inequality and housing costs
• Industry Composition – e.g., advanced industry employment ratio and establishment entry/exit rate
• Infrastructure – g., percentage of bridges in poor condition and electricity affordability
• Institutions and Partnerships – g., ED organizations ratio and percent county budget as grants

Some of these indicators positively contribute to economic development capacity while others may inhibit capacity. The EDCI uses applied scaling, recognizing the relevancy of community size, to compare large metro areas and rural counties as best possible. A significant aspect of the tool is that there is no overall index score, because the EDCI is designed to help users pinpoint specific strengths or areas for growth among capacity areas.

Key Takeaways:

• Inform Local Development: Community leaders can utilize both the NERDE and EDCI tools to better inform their local and regional economic development plans and initiatives.
• Guide Regional Efforts: The NERDE tool allows regions to use various components such as demographics, labor force statistics, and GDP information to guide regional economic efforts.
• Data Driven Decisions: The EDCI tool provides leaders with data driven estimates of capacity to help better plan initiatives and make more informed decisions.

Additional Resources:

CEDS Central

Economic Development Capacity Index (EDCI)

National Economic Resilience Data Explorer (NERDE)

National Economic Research and Resilience Center

Contact/Feedback: [email protected]

This webinar is offered through the NADO Research Foundation’s Economic Development District Community of Practice (EDD CoP), funded by US EDA. To learn more about this effort to build capacity across the national network of EDDs, visit: www.nado.org/EDDCoP.