
Nearly every job in America, mapped in detail - sebg
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/14/nearly-every-job-in-america-mapped-in-incredible-detail/
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jnordwick
This it not the TYPE of job, but by INDUSTRY it appears from looking at the
LED (Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics) description.

The difference is incredibly important. Have 500 workers including janitorial,
secretarial, programmers, and executives at a high-tech company and they are
all reported as high-tech workers regardless if the highest tech they touch is
a floor waxer. Or have some IT people at a hotel and they are classified as
hospitality.

I never like these industry classifications because they aren't actually very
helpful in looking at employent statistics except in aggregate.

~~~
tuckermi
Your observation is spot-on and I agree that it's important not to misread
this data set, but I think it still has some valuable uses. While I would
rather see more detail, I am interested to see how different industries impact
overall employment in the economy even if I can't bucket all the individual
jobs under one heading.

With that said, given that a lot of companies contract out for non-core work
(e.g. janitorial, kitchen/food-preparation in cafeterias, etc), I wonder how
that is handled in this dataset? In particular, what location would be
associated with a given contract worker. Would it be their employer's address
or the address where they provide services?

~~~
jnordwick
Employer. These are all done through payroll numbers and some self-reports to
fill in the gaps maybe. I'm guessing, similar to the monthly ESR establishment
survey.

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0942v8653
Direct link:
[http://robertmanduca.com/projects/jobs.html](http://robertmanduca.com/projects/jobs.html)

The data is available in (gzipped) CSV here:
[http://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/](http://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/)

And LEHD also has its own visualizations here:
[http://lehd.ces.census.gov/applications/](http://lehd.ces.census.gov/applications/)

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joshuaheard
Great map! I notice a large amount of green. In fact, most major cities are
completely green. Could it be an even tight mix of blue and yellow dots making
it look green? Also, the Microsoft campus near where I live is red (Mfg,
trade). Wouldn't they be blue (professional)? How about a color for
agricultural jobs.

~~~
rando3826
re. microsoft: they are, just bundled into a small area. Look closely.

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timdierks
I really don't understand the classification. Most of Manhattan appears to be
predominantly green. And while there's plenty of
government/education/healthcare workers here, I don't think that's a
reasonable classification for most of the companies with big offices in NYC.
Something is off.

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protomyth
Other than it seems to only allows zooming in cities, its data is pretty wrong
looking at the local map. I don't see the local manufacturing plant or any
farm jobs.

~~~
jnordwick
Farm jobs are generally not included in the employment statistics gathered
(nor for military occupations) for historical reasons. There was a push in the
80s the change that.

~~~
protomyth
Uhm, agriculture is listed as "Number of jobs in NAICS sector 11 (Agriculture,
Forestry, Fishing and Hunting)"[1] which is coded CNS01 in the csv tables[2].

1)
[http://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/lodes/LODES7/LODESTechDoc7.0...](http://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/lodes/LODES7/LODESTechDoc7.0.pdf)

2)
[http://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/#lodes](http://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/#lodes)

~~~
jnordwick
Those still aren't farm jobs. From the LODES description of what it doesn't
count:

"Business owners, self-employed persons, some temporary workers, family
farmers, military personnel, and others are typically outside of this frame,
are not covered, and thus not counted in LODES."

[http://www.datafinder.org/metadata/CensusWorkplaceAreaCharac...](http://www.datafinder.org/metadata/CensusWorkplaceAreaCharacteristics.html)

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c-slice
For some reason, the map seems to be categorizing technology jobs as green
(Healthcare, Education, and Government). Look at SF, and it's almost
completely green.

~~~
nostrademons
The data is very dubious - they've mapped the entire Googleplex as "Retail,
hospitality, and other services". The North Bayshore area east of Shoreline is
listed as "Manufacturing and trade" \- most of that area is Google now.

Sunnyvale and the Stanford area look pretty accurate though, and it got the
big office park near Middlefield-Ellis-Whisman and some of the industrial
areas in Santa Clara. Perhaps it's working off an old data set (~2000ish)?

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kec
Even if it's that old, that doesn't explain why Infinite Loop would be
categorized as Manufacturing and trade, with all the area around it as
healthcare and government.

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dimino
That's kind of odd, that Mass. isn't included. I wonder what happened there.

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tricolon
The Census Bureau is rather vague about that:

> All 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin
> Islands have joined the LED Partnership, although the LEHD program is not
> yet producing public-use statistics for Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, or the
> U.S. Virgin Islands.

[http://lehd.ces.census.gov/](http://lehd.ces.census.gov/)

~~~
TillE
> (Massachusetts has not submitted data to the Census Bureau as of this date)

Presumably not some legal restriction, then. They simply haven't provided the
data.

[http://lehd.ces.census.gov/research/](http://lehd.ces.census.gov/research/)

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mariojv
Looks like the map is broken right now. Is anyone else having problems viewing
it?

~~~
waterside81
Can't see it either. The CSS & JS it loads from Amazon's CloudFront isn't
resolving properly.

~~~
falcolas
Broken for me as well, but not cloud front; instead I get this in the console:

    
    
        ReferenceError: L is not defined jobs.html:38:12

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TheGRS
Noticing an issue with zoom levels. It appears there is only a national zoom
resolution, another at the 4-5 states level and then one more resolution at
the tiny, neighborhood level. There's not a good resolution for looking at the
state level or metropolitan level unfortunately.

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wahsd
Seems to me like modeling every single job based on census data seems
unnecessary. Couldn't you also use maybe even just other census data or zoning
data on the types of businesses and then pattern based on density, esp. with
such rough grouping of classifications?

Great work thought.

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columbo
Green: Healthcare, Education, and Government

Blue: Professional Services

Looks like how Minneapolis and St. Paul folk perceive each-other is dead on:

[http://i.imgur.com/56EgrkE.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/56EgrkE.jpg)

~~~
cesarbs
How do they perceive each other?

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harterrt
I'm surprised by the prevalence of the green dots, particularly in San Jose.

I'll have to take a look at the data to verify government and education jobs
are really that common.

