LibGuides: Social Science Data and Statistics Sources: United States Data and Statistics

Alternatives to U.S. federal data

"Recently, there have been significant changes to the availability of federal data. These data are heavily used by researchers and the general public; they also undergird policy and funding decisions made on behalf of people across the US and worldwide." - NYU Libraries

Data Rescue Project
The Data Rescue Project and their Data Rescue Tracker is a coordinated effort among a group of data organizations, including IASSIST, RDAP, and members of the Data Curation Network. It serves as a clearinghouse for data rescue-related efforts and data access points for public US governmental data that are currently at risk. "We want to know what is happening in the community so that we can coordinate focus."
End of Term Web Archive
The End of Term Web Archive captures and saves U.S. Government websites at the end of presidential administrations. The EOT has thus far preserved websites from administration changes in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020.
Internet Archive: US Government Documents
This collection contains digital versions of United States Government documents as well as other government documents.
Wayback Machine
Allows you to search among screen captures of web sites over time, with over 411 billion web pages saved. Start with a known URL to explore past iterations of a website and its content.

United States Data and Statistics Sources

A dataset with political datasets
Huge compilation of political and economic datasets by Erik Gahner
data.census.gov
This is the new platform for accessing recent Census Bureau data. FYI, the Census Bureau stopped releasing new data in American FactFinder (AFF) at the end of June 2019 and transitioned to data.census.gov for data releases formerly on AFF.
data.gov
Browse data sets by topic, or search the data catalog. You can limit your results to geospatial data sets. Federal and non-federal (state, county, municipal, etc.) data sources are available.
Features: Download data in a variety of formats including tables, geospatial dataset, and APIs. Users can also harvest metadata.
FBI Crime Statistics - Crime Data Explorer (CDE)
Provides access to federal crime data by offense, state, and time period (back to 1979). Additionally provides access to data on Human Trafficking, Cargo Theft, & Hate Crime Statistics ave been available in the publication Crime in the United States (CIUS). As a supplement to CIUS,
Features: The Crime Data Explorer (CDE) provides select datasets for download. Incident-based data by state, summary data estimates, and data about other specific topics may be downloaded in CSV files from the selections below. Data are also available via the Crime Data API, a read-only web service that returns JSON or CSV data, and provides experienced users access to large amounts of UCR data to use and share.
FRED
FRED compiles macro data from a variety of government and other sources. FRED is a database of over 383,000 economic time series from 82 sources. St. Louis Fed provides even more historical economic resources.
Features: Charts and graphs, exportable into Excel and text files.
Google Dataset Search
Dataset Search is a search engine for datasets. Using a simple keyword search, users can discover datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the Web.
Harvard Dataverse
Housed at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) at Harvard. Claims to host the world's largest collection of social science research. It holds data from many researchers and institutions in addition to Harvard.

Historical Statistics of the United States
A compendium of statistics from over 1000 sources.
Features: Tables are available for download in CSV (comma-separated value) and Excel formats.
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
ICPSR is one of the largest repositories for social science data in the world. Among the many topics covered, you will find statistics on crime, education, demographics, elections, religion, and much more.
Features: Tables available from a list of datasets

Migration Data Hub
International & U.S. immigration statistics from the Migration Policy Institute, independent think tank in Washington, DC.
Features: Export charts in CSV (comma-separated value) and maps as images, PDFs, or Tableau workbooks.

Social Science Electronic Data Library (SSEDL)
The Social Science Electronic Data Library (SSEDL) is an extensive health and social science resource that consists of nine topically focused data archives. The data studies in each archive are suitable for use with statistical software and each consists of one or more data files, related documentation, and SAS and SPSS program statement files.
Features: Extensive datasets available to download.
ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States
A comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic conditions of the United States.
Features: Tables from various sources in PDF or online; also exportable to Excel (.xls). Includes citation information, source documentation, and key terms.
ProQuest Statistical Insight
Formerly called LexisNexis Statistical, this database provides tables from international statistical publications as well as U.S. government and business reports, U.S. federal statistical publications, and U.S. State government, business, and research institute statistical publications.
Features: Abstracts, PDF full text, tables (.gif or .xls), and links to other editions of the same study or datasets from a different year. All features are not available for all results.
Social Explorer
Helps you visually analyze and understand demographic, election, health, environment and other data through the use of interactive maps and data reports. Download tables and join them with shape files.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor is the principal federal agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, working conditions, and price changes in the economy. Its mission is to collect, analyze, and disseminate essential economic information to support public and private decision making.
Features: Create your own table from available data sets (select variables); Export into Excel.

Statista
Statista provides access to statistics and studies gathered by market researchers, trade organizations, scientific publications, and government sources on over 600 industries. This will link to statistics, but not downloadable datasets. You might be able to follow the sources to the data providers.