The U.S. Census Bureau has recently released a new set of tables from their 2002 Survey of Business Owners (SBO) which shows women-owned firms by metropolitan statistical area.  Unfortunately for all of us (and the ability of our policy makers to have timely data for making decisions), the 2002 SBO is the most recent data available to us to look in-depth at questions of owner demographics and geography. What I find most interesting in the data is how New York, Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago move away from the pack, but each with their own character.  Houston, in particular, looks interesting to me, moving to third in the nation in women-owned employer firms although it's maybe the sixth largest metro area by population.

The SBO is a great resource for understanding entrepreneurship.  I only wish it was performed more regularly and more broadly.  You can read my recent thoughts on this in the proceedings of the 2008 Kauffman Data Symposium.  

Immigration presents a lot difficulties for national statistical offices and the production of meaningful data because it typically involves the movement of people into or out of their jurisdictional boundaries.  Today we released a report based on a survey performed by Duke University looking at immigrants to the United States who had since returned to their home countries, with a particular focus on China and India.  The large sample of these immigrants and unique method of using LinkedIn are sure to produce copycat techniques moving forward.  

Another study we released a couple of weeks ago had a surprisingly important component on immigrants - an entrepreneurial impact assessment of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  Here, non-native students to MIT were found to have produced large economic returns for Massachussetts and the world in the companies which they went on to found.  It was clear that the import of talent in the case of MIT had been an economic development boom for the state and the nation.  

Lastly, the OECD recently produced what I thought was a really smart document, summarizing what we know about the global competition for talent.  It's worth checking out if you have an interest in this area.