August 8, 2025

General Samari's data troops

I swung by the Census office to take a look at its operation, and was given a briefing from Sohale Samari, the Census Area Manager whose normal occupation is serving as the economic data expert at our Department of Commerce.

I swung by the Census office to take a look at its operation, and was given a briefing from Sohale Samari, the Census Area Manager whose normal occupation is serving as the economic data expert at our Department of Commerce.

We can, of course, argue about whether or not collecting all that data–much of which is quite personal– is the legitimate realm of the government. But that’s a topic for an entire column on its own. Heck, it’s probably a ripe topic for an entire book.

In the meantime, I will–along with every other economist under the sun–continue to use all the useful data provided by the U.S. Census.

And a weighty matter the mere collecting of that data is. The CNMI’s census troops numbered about 400 at the peak of their activity in January and February. I never gave it much thought until I visited Mr. Samari, but compiling all that data is a huge undertaking, and it had all the looks of some kind of well organized military operation.
There is a hierarchy of management, with Samari at the top–el Data Generalissimo– and layers of his lieutenants and their data collecting foot soldiers beneath.

All this activity doesn’t come cheap, which is great, since Uncle Sam picks up the tab and dropped about three million bucks here for the event. Most of that cool three mil was paid out in salaries, though, presumably, some went to things like rent and supplies and such.

And, at this juncture, when any good economic news is welcome news, we can consider that $3 million injected into our economy like that will produce a “ripple” effect. This is known, in technical parlance, as the “multiplier” effect.

The multiplier effect is the amount of times a dollar “turns over” in the economy over the course of a year. If you pay Joe Census worker $100, he’ll spend it on meat and bread and brewskis and other goodies. And then, in turn, the butcher, the baker, and the brewer will buy their supplies with that money, and their suppliers, in turn, will pay their employees with that money, and so on, and so on.

In other words, every dollar paid to an employee and then spent by the employee has this ripple effect. A similar logic holds for monies paid to landlords and other suppliers the Census would have dealt with.

I’m not inclined to waste much brainpower speculating about the various multipliers in this case. Still, we can take that $3 million in Census expenditures and say that it will result in a $10 million to $12 million or so boost to the local economy.

Hey, we need all the millions we can get these days.

And Samari sure had millions of accolades to heap onto his loyal troopers–all of whom were (and are) local talent. He cited their professionalism, hard work, creativity, and said they’re all proud of pulling together and successfully tackling such a large project.
That will be an impressive line on everyone’s resume over there.

And, over there in Washington, the Census guys will soon be crunching the data that was compiled here. The first results will come out in January of next year. Stay tuned….

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