Despite recent headlines about data capture, Google remains an excellent source of (or gateway to) information on socio-demographic data. For example, if you type in 'population' followed by a country name, such as 'mexico' then this is what you'll get...
If you do this with any country you'll get the latest results plus a little graph which you can then click on and explore further. Similarly, if you type in 'eu unemployment' you will see a little chart showing EU unemployment - currently 10.2% for March 2012 - and how it has changed over time. If you click on the small chart you'll then see data for Europe and be able to add in data for other EU nations by clicking the boxes to the left. You can even embed this in a web page, as you can see below...
Apart from being convenient and accurate, this is also a very useful analytical tool when you need quick comparisons, like in the example below where I've compared Spain, the EU, Germany and Austria. As you can see the time-series data does not always extend as far back as we'd like but it is a great way to get your head round what is happening in different places without much effort at all. You'll notice in the embedded graphs that if you hover over a line it should tell you the data value for that point.
I've now changed the criteria in the chart so that it only includes unemployment for those aged less than 25 - and I've added in the UK too. This makes pretty grim reading for the EU, and Spain in particular...
This method also works for lots of other kinds of data. For example, if you type in 'us gdp' you'll see the data for the US but also have the option to add in lots of other comparators. One of the most interesting comparisons is looking at GDP over time, as you can see below.
I'm going to a conference in China at the end of June, hence my interest in national comparisons. This kind of thing has of course been covered extensively by Hans Rosling, but not many people know that it is fully integrated into Google's basic functionality.