User Guide

1. See the anchor impacts for your region.

Type your region into the “search region” bar and click “view result.” Your region’s profile page appears with direct, indirect, and induced impacts for anchor institution employment, income, and gross domestic product (GDP). Values in blue indicate 2019 impacts, while values in gray indicate 2004 impacts. Your region’s place on the reliance index is presented for 2019 and 2004. Additional facts regarding higher education institutions and hospitals in 2019 in your region appear at the bottom of the profile page. This page can be downloaded and printed.

2. Understand the anchor economy in your state.

Scroll down to the bottom of your region’s profile. At the bottom of the profile, under the facts about higher education institutions and hospital, click the View State Profile link. This will bring you to the region’s state profile, displaying anchor impacts from 2004 and 2019. Note that regions spanning multiple states will be linked to the first state listed in each MSA name.

3. Compare your region with a comparable or competitive set of regions.

Type your region into the search region bar and click “view result.” At the bottom of your regional profile, choose “compare with other regions.” In the region filter, continue to type the name of comparable or competitive regions (up to 10 total) and click “compare selected regions.” All the regions (up to 10) that you added will appear, and you will be able to download their profile pages or a spreadsheet with the data from the profile pages displayed for all 10 regions. Alternatively, instead of using the “region filter” to add specific locations to compare, use the other filter options to compare your region with others in the same population category or other regions in the same state.

4. View all regions within your state.

Choose a region in your state. Click “view result.” At the bottom of the region’s profile, select “compare with other regions.” In the filter options that appear, within the “state” filter scroll to the name of your state or begin to type it and select it when it appears. All regions within the state will appear — both metro and nonmetro. You can choose up to 10 regions at a time to download.

5. Learn about regions with the highest reliance indexes and changes in reliance.

Make sure the “search region” toolbar is empty. Under the “select metric” toolbar, choose reliance index. Click “view result.” All regions and their reliance indexes will appear, beginning with the largest and going to the smallest. Scroll through the list and check those you’re most interested in viewing details for. Up to 10 regions will appear at a time and you can forward to see additional regions in the ranking. All the regions you select — up to 10 — will appear in list when you click “compare selected regions.” You can download detailed data about these 10 regions by their reliance indexes. You can repeat this for other metrics, such as employment impacts, income impacts, and GDP impacts.

6. Download the full data set.

Select a metric. You will see the top 10 regions for that metric displayed. Without filling out any filters, scroll down to the bottom of the list of 10 regions and click “download full data set.” You are also able to download the full data set from any individual regional profile. You can also download a key of the data set's column headings. The full data set includes all data available within the profile for 2004 and 2019, in addition to the changes in select metrics between these years.