Planning, Economic and Demographic Analysis Programs

COG assists and supports local, state, and federal planning activities by serving as a major review and information resource on planning actions taken throughout the region. Through its Planning, Economic and Demographic Analysis programs, COG coordinates and integrates planning policies for land use, transportation, and the environment and carries out the recommendations of the region's Partnership for Regional Excellence. Data and analyses produced by this program, particularly through its Cooperative Forecasting program, serve as major inputs to much of the work done by the Transportation Planning Board and other state, regional, and local organizations. This work also assists local governments in assessing their own plans and forecasts.

COG's Cooperative Forecasting program provides regularly updated population, household, and employment forecasts for use in area-wide and local planning activities. The data are available for the region as a whole, as well as on a jurisdiction and sub-jurisdiction basis. COG also serves as an official Census Bureau Co-State Data Center for the Washington region, providing access to, and analysis of, various Census Bureau products.

COG also collects and monitors economic data from various federal, state, and local sources and publishes monthly, annual, and occasional summaries and analyses. Key information on the region's job growth, unemployment, inflation, retail sales, and more is analyzed and presented in the annual Economic Trends in Metropolitan Washington report and the monthly Regional Economic Monitoring System (REMS) report. Economic growth as measured through new construction is monitored in the annual Commercial Construction Indicators report.

Committee Structure