Monthly local market pulse report in Notion
Publish a fresh ranked report on how your target metros are changing on population, income, rent, and jobs to a Notion page every month.
US Census Bureau
NotionOperationsMarketingAI ReportsResearch & MonitoringBuild me an agent workflow that publishes a monthly Local Market Pulse report to Notion summarizing how my target metros are changing.
Trigger: cron on the first Monday of every month at 9am in my local time zone.
Inputs the agent needs from me at install time: the Notion data source ID of the database where I keep my target markets (each row has a friendly name property and a 5 digit county FIPS property), and the Notion page ID of the parent page where new monthly reports should be created.
On each run the agent should do the following:
1. Use Notion 'Query a Data Source' to read every row from my target markets database. Pull the friendly name and the county FIPS code for each market.
2. For each market, call US Census 'Query Population Estimates' for the latest two annual vintages of the Population Estimates Program and compute year over year population growth (absolute and percent).
3. For each market, call US Census 'Query American Community Survey 1-Year (ACS1)' for the latest two vintages to get median household income, unemployment rate, and median gross rent, and compute year over year change for each. If a county falls below the ACS 1-Year 65,000 population threshold, fall back to the ACS 5-Year dataset and note that in the narrative.
4. For each market, call US Census 'Query County Business Patterns' for total establishments and total employment, plus employment broken out by a few headline 2 digit NAICS sectors (retail trade 44-45, accommodation and food services 72, health care and social assistance 62, professional/scientific/technical 54, construction 23). Compare to the prior vintage.
5. Compose a short markdown report. Start with a one paragraph executive summary that calls out the two or three most notable shifts in plain English (for example 'Median rent in Mecklenburg County jumped 8 percent year over year' or 'Maricopa County added 42,000 residents, the fastest growth on the list'). Then include a markets ranked by population growth table, and one short section per market with the key year over year deltas. Always cite the vintage years used so readers know how fresh each figure is.
6. Use Notion 'Create a Page' to create a new child page under the parent I configured, with a title like 'Local Market Pulse, June 2026'.
7. Use Notion 'Update Page Content as Markdown' to populate that page with the composed report.
Other behavior: if Census returns no data for a vintage (sometimes it lags), use the most recent available vintage and note the year in the narrative. If a county FIPS code is malformed or returns nothing, skip that market and list it at the bottom of the report under 'Skipped markets' with the reason. Do not fail the whole run because of one bad row.
Integrations: US Census Bureau (Query Population Estimates, Query American Community Survey 1-Year, Query American Community Survey 5-Year as fallback, Query County Business Patterns) and Notion (Query a Data Source, Create a Page, Update Page Content as Markdown).
Additional information
What does this prompt do?
- Reads the list of counties and metros you track in a Notion database every month and pulls fresh public data for each one.
- Compares the latest year to the year before on population, median household income, unemployment, median rent, total establishments, and employment by headline industry.
- Ranks your markets by population growth and writes a short plain English summary of the two or three most notable shifts.
- Creates a new Notion page under a parent you choose, dated for the month, ready to share with your team.
What do I need to use this?
- A Notion workspace with a database that lists the counties or metros you want to track (county name and 5 digit county FIPS code).
- A parent Notion page where the monthly reports should live.
- A free US Census Bureau API key so the report can pull fresh data.
How can I customize it?
- Change the cadence (weekly, quarterly, or first business day of the month) by editing the schedule.
- Add or remove markets just by editing rows in your Notion database, no workflow changes needed.
- Swap the headline industries the report breaks out, or focus the narrative on rent, jobs, or population growth.
Frequently asked questions
Where does the data in the report come from?
Do I need to pay for anything?
What if Census has not released new data for a market this month?
Can I track metro areas instead of counties?
How do I add a new market later?
Related templates
Stop rebuilding your local market tracker by hand.
Connect Notion and the Census Bureau once, and a fresh ranked market pulse lands in your workspace on the first Monday of every month.