Beginning in 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau ceased recognizing the state of Connecticut’s historical county boundaries in its data reporting and adopted the state’s nine planning regions as county-equivalents. Due to this change, Contexter Market Reports for 2024 will be available for both counties and planning regions within Connecticut. Because some Contexter data sources have not yet adopted the new planning regions (as of October 2024), some market report sections for this year will only be available on county-level reports, while other sections will only be available on planning region reports.
Background
Beginning in 2024, all Census Bureau operations and publications, both internal and external, have adopted the nine new county-equivalent planning region boundaries, names, and codes (except for 2020 Decennial Census data publications and other datasets referencing the eight legacy counties as published before June 1, 2022).
While Connecticut’s eight historical counties have long served as stable geographic units for reporting statistical data, they have not functioned as governmental or administrative entities since the state abolished county government in 1960. Since that time, Connecticut has established nine Councils of Government (COGs) that oversee administrative planning and programming within a specific region and act similarly to county governments in other states. Each COG has its own associated planning region with designated boundaries (note, however, that in some instances the name of the planning region differs from that of its COG).
Although the planning regions and counties do not align completely, there is substantial overlap. Figure 1 (below) depicts the relationship between Connecticut’s eight counties and its nine planning regions.
Source: United States Census Bureau (87 FR 34235)
For additional details and resources related to Connecticut’s transition from counties to planning regions, you can access the Census Bureau’s Federal Register Notice (87 FR 34235) published on June 6, 2022.
Impacts on Connecticut Market Reports
As alluded to above, some Contexter data sources have not yet implemented the new planning regions into their data collection/reporting framework (as of the writing of this article in October 2024). As a result, data from these sources for the year 2024 is only available at the county level, while data from other sources is only available at the planning region level.
To account for this inconsistency in the availability of data, findCRA has published two sets of market reports for Connecticut counties/county-equivalents in 2024: a set that comprises the eight historical counties and a set that comprises the nine new planning regions. Some market report sections for 2024 will only be available on county-level reports, while other sections will only be available on planning region reports, and two sections (Geography and Trends) will be available at both the county and planning region levels, as outlined below.
County Market Reports
The following market report sections will be available at the county level in Connecticut in 2024:
- Geography
- Investment
- Banks
- Nonprofits
- Trends
Planning Region Market Reports
The following market report sections will be available at the planning region level in Connecticut in 2024:
- Geography
- Demographics
- Housing
- Income
- Employment
- Education
- Trends
Exporting Market Report Data
The market report exporting feature will be available for all Connecticut counties and planning regions for the year 2024 (note, however, that planning region data only exists for the year 2024, so prior year reports cannot be exported for planning region reports).
If a market report section is missing (due to the data inconsistencies mentioned above), the fields for that section will appear within the CSV export file, however, no data will be populated for all fields in the missing sections.
If you have any questions or need additional help related to the planning region changes in Connecticut, please reach out to our team at support@findCRA.com or start a LiveChat.
