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single-family home or a single apartment unit.) For example, if the census <br />showed a change of 500 households from 1970 to 1980, the first approximation of <br />a city-s trend was 50 households per year. Examination of the permits <br />indicated important aspects of change in a community. It showed if a community <br />followed national growth cycles and to what degree the community's overall <br />trend was influenced by a few large projects. Over the last 10 or 15 years, a <br />number of cities had only one large apartment project. Some of these projects <br />had hundreds of units, enough to significantly affect the annual average. That <br />is, the overall trend was too high. These communities actually had single- <br />family housing activity with one large project. In these cases, the initial <br />forecasts used the single-family trend. If there was not enough land available <br />in a city to accommodate continuation of the trend, the city was assumed to <br />stop growing during the forecast period. Finally, all �—Ity and township <br />forecasts were adjusted to total to the regional household forecasts. <br />MCD POPULATION FORECASTS <br />This work had much the same form as the household forecast, but used additional <br />data. Census data, school enrollment by grade and building permits helped <br />project the number of people living in a household. The age distribution and <br />number of students in the higher grades indicate the potential number of people <br />that could leave the area to go to work, to further training or to college. <br />The types of housing built in an area change the number of people per unit. <br />Apartments have a much smaller number of people per unit than single-family <br />houses. The forecaster persons per household ratio multiplied by the expected <br />number of households yielded the population forecasts. Once again, the MCDs <br />were added and adjusted to m?et the regional population forecast. <br />MCD EMPLOYMENT FORECASTS <br />"Employment" is the number of people that work within a community, whether they <br />live there or not. This differs from - data, which counts "employed" <br />people where they live rather than where they work. MCD employment in 1970 <br />came from a Minnesota Department of Transportation data set done for <br />transportation modelling. More recent employment data came from a special <br />tabulation of covered employment by city. This source is divided by industry <br />and is available from 1977 to 1983. Covered employment includes all working <br />people that are covered by the Unemployment Compensation Insurance Program. <br />The program is administered by the Department of Economic Security. They <br />prepared the data for this region. <br />The initial trend was calculated from 1970 to 1983 using covered employment. <br />Just as in the household forecasts, the structure of employment was examined to <br />determine factors that would affect the trend. In addition, commercial and <br />industrial building permit data helped determine if recent development activity <br />reflected local service and retail needs, or was regional in nature. Local <br />service and retail activities include fast food drive-ins, grocery stores, <br />dentist offices and small banks. Regional activities are speciality shopping <br />centers, warehouses, multi -tenant office buildings and corporate headquarters. <br />The forecasts reflected other factors such as land supply shortages, zoning <br />restrictions and planned projects. The individual MCD forecasts were summed <br />and compared to regional forecasted employment and adjusted as .,ecessary. <br />5.29.85 <br />VW529A,ARCNIV <br />