The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently released the newest version of its Atlas of Rural and Small-Town America, which now includes 2018 county-level population and labor force data. The resource is updated often, free to access online and can prove to be a valuable tool for equipment dealers. The data is presented via an interactive, easy-to-navigate map, color-coded depending on the category selected.

The Atlas provides statistics by broad categories of socioeconomic factors:

• People: Demographic data from the American Community Survey (ACS), including age, race and ethnicity, migration and immigration, education, household size and family composition.
• Jobs: Economic data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other sources, including information on employment trends, unemployment and industrial composition of employment from the ACS.
• County classifications: The rural-urban continuum, economic dependence, persistent poverty, persistent child poverty, population loss, onshore oil/natural gas counties and other ERS county typology codes.
• Income: Data on median household income, per capita income and poverty (including child poverty).
• Veterans: Data on veterans, including service period, education, unemployment, income and demographic characteristics.

How can you use this atlas?

• View county-level maps for socioeconomic indicators.
• View the entire country or zoom into specific regions, states or county areas.
• For any county, view a pop-up window showing data for the indicators in the broad category for that county, with the option to download the selection.
• Print a version of the map or save the image in a graphics-file format that may be added to a document or presentation.
• Download a spreadsheet or CSV files containing all the data items for all U.S. counties.