New Geography

Author: Joshua Wright

  • What America’s Fastest-Growing Economies Have in Common

    Midland and Odessa in West Texas. Pascagoula, a port town on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Fargo and Bismarck, the two largest cities in North Dakota. These were among the USA’s 10 fastest-growing metro economies in 2013, as ranked by growth in real gross metropolitan product (GMP), and they have a few things in common.

    For one thing, none are huge population magnets. They’re also either at the center of the energy boom or indirectly benefiting from the advances in fracking technology. And they share another common trait, too: along with Columbus, Ind., also in the top 10, most of these metro areas depend on one major, export-oriented industry sector to bring in outside income and drive growth.

    In Columbus’ case, it’s manufacturing. In Odessa and Midland’s, it’s oil and gas extraction. Fargo and Bismarck have diversified economies, but they’ve a seen surge in economic activity because of North Dakota’s oil and gas boom. And in Pascagoula, it’s shipbuilding (and shipments of liquefied natural gas through the Port of Pascagoula).

    USA TODAY had a good rundown from 24/7 Wall St. of the top 10 (and bottom 10) economies, which were based on a Conference of Mayors report released in January. The authors of the piece touched on the reliance most of these metros have on one industry, and the ups and downs that can come with that. In the case of Columbus, they pointed to EMSI’s recent analysis:

    The area is highly dependent on manufacturing, and according to a 2012 report from Economic Modeling Specialists Intl., it highly “exemplifies the intriguing potential, and inherent risks, that come with relying on the manufacturing sector.” Engine and motor vehicle parts makers are a huge part of the area’s economy, where manufacturing jobs accounted for nearly 20,000 of the 53,000 total jobs as of November.

    Columbus, Ind., which was No. 9 on the fastest-growing economy list, is home to engine-maker Cummins. The central Indiana metro has a remarkable concentration of manufacturing jobs — more than a third of jobs in Columbus are manufacturing-based, and it has the highest share of mechanical engineers in the U.S. (just ahead of Peoria and Bloomington-Normal, Ill.). In recent years, employment growth in Columbus has sizzled, while Cummins continues to prosper.

    When a regional economy relies on a single basic industry like manufacturing or energy for much of its employment and exports, it can mean lots of prosperity — and a big jump in gross metro product, as USA TODAY’s list indicates. But it’s also a risky proposition. For every spike in manufacturing production, there are pullbacks and plant shutdowns. Energy booms don’t (usually) last for decades.

    “If you’re a small metro area depending on a vulnerable export sector, once that industry goes, you’re in big trouble,” Alec Friedhoff of the Brookings Institution told 24/7 Wall St.

    For metros like Midland and Odessa, the natural multiplier effects that come with energy booms will lead to more jobs in business services, retail, and especially transportation. Public-sector infrastructure jobs also usually follow. But the end goal is to spur innovation and sustainable job creation elsewhere in the economy.

    With that in mind, which of these 10 fastest-growing metros based on GMP growth is the most diversified already? The following table shows the largest contributor to gross regional product (as shown EMSI’s Analyst), as well as the sector with the largest share of jobs in each metro. The table is ranked by how the 10 metros fared in 2010-2013 job growth.

    Fastest-Growing MSAs (Based on 2013 GMP Growth) 2013 Jobs 2010-2013 % Job Growth Largest Sector Largest Contributor to 2012 GRP (Private)
    Source: QCEW Employees, Non-QCEW Employees & Self-Employed – EMSI 2013.4 Class of Worker; EMSI Social Accounting Matrix model (2012)
    Midland, TX 92,857 23% Mining/Oil & Gas Extraction (22% of jobs) Mining/Oil & Gas Extraction (55% of total)
    Odessa, TX 80,360 23% Mining/Oil & Gas Extraction (15% of jobs) Mining/Oil & Gas Extraction (28% of total)
    Columbus, IN 52,014 18% Manufacturing (36% of jobs) Manufacturing (50% of total)
    Bismarck, ND 75,090 10% Government (19% of jobs) Health Care (13% of total)
    Fargo, ND-MN 143,563 9% Health Care (13% of jobs) Manufacturing, Wholesale Trade, Finance/Insurance, and Health Care (each 10% of total)
    Sioux Falls, SD 153,358 6% Health Care (17% of jobs) Finance/Insurance (18% of total)
    Cheyenne, WY 53,917 6% Government (32% of jobs) Manufacturing and Real Estate (each 10% of total)
    Trenton-Ewing, NJ 253,751 4% Government (27% of jobs) Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (13% of total)
    St. Joseph, MO-KS 60,643 2% Manufacturing (17% of jobs) Manufacturing (25% of total)
    Pascagoula, MS 60,214 -3% Manufacturing (22% of jobs) Manufacturing (46% of total)

    Manufacturing in Columbus makes up the highest percentage of jobs (36%), and mining and oil and gas extraction in Midland is the most dominant GRP force (55% of the total in 2012). Fargo and Bismarck, despite getting lumped in with other North Dakota oil hubs, are fairly spread out in both employment and contributors to GRP. And Pascagoula, where manufacturing accounted for 46% of GRP in 2012, is the only one of the fastest-growing metros to see an employment decline (-3% since 2010).

    Sioux Falls, however, stands out in terms of industry mix and GRP — finance and health care are strong industries, and the metro has seen seen steady job growth.

    SiouxFalls_2003-2013

    Employment has increased 17% since 2003, and the gains have been broad-based. Nine major sectors, including health care, retail trade, finance, government, and professional, scientific, and technical services, have added at least 1,000 jobs in the last decade.

    That’s a diversified economy, all right. But most of the other less-diversified economies on this list are doing just fine, too.

    Joshua Wright is an editor at EMSI, an Idaho-based economics firm that provides data and analysis to workforce boards, economic development agencies, higher education institutions, and the private sector. He manages the EMSI blog and is a freelance journalist. Contact him here.

  • Middle-Wage Jobs That Have Survived, and the States That Are Fostering Them

    Middle-skill jobs are in the same camp as green jobs, STEM jobs, and other groups of occupations that garner lots of attention: They can be defined many ways, by many rubrics. Regardless of the definition, however, it’s clear that middle-skill, or middle-wage, jobs have been in decline for years.

    New research from the Federal Reserve indicates the share of middle-skill jobs in the workforce has dropped from 25% in 1985 to just above 15% today, part of the hollowing-out effect that David Autor of MIT has documented. And as our chart above shows, middle-wage jobs — those that pay between $13.84 and $21.13 per hour, as defined by the National Employment Law Project — sustained much deeper cuts during the 2008-2009 recession than high- and low-wage jobs.

    But not every middle-skill, middle-wage job is now extinct because of automation and offshoring. A subset of mid-wage manufacturing jobs (along with jobs in energy, health care, and other sectors) are among the healthiest post-recession occupations in the U.S. Furthermore, in a handful of states (Wyoming, Iowa, North Dakota, Michigan), mid-wage fields account for more than or close to 40% of all new jobs since 2010.

    Mid-Skill or Mid-Wage?

    For our analysis, we used middle-wage jobs instead of middle-skill jobs (i.e., those that require less than a bachelor’s degree but more than a high school degree). This is because some occupations that the BLS has assigned a mid level of education (e.g., registered nurses) often require a higher level of education by employers.

    This methodology is similar to the one used by Autor is his 2010 study. For a brief synopsis of why Autor used wage to approximate skill, see here.

    Share of New Jobs in Mid-Wage Category

    In the U.S., a quarter of all new jobs since 2010 fall in the mid-wage range. That’s a slightly smaller share than high-wage jobs (29%), while almost half (46%) of new jobs have been low-wage.

    ShareNewJobsbyWage

    No state has stood out more than Wyoming, where 45% of new jobs since 2010 have been mid-wage — well ahead of Iowa (37%), North Dakota (36%), and Michigan (35%). Texas (25%) and California (23%) have created the most total new middle-wage jobs in the nation, but they’re in the middle of the pack in terms of the share of all new jobs.

    State-MidWage-ShareAt the bottom, Rhode Island is the only state that’s lost middle-wage jobs the last few years. Coincidentally, it’s also seen a decline in high-wage jobs, meaning all of its job growth has been in occupations that pay $13.83 or lower.

    Meanwhile, Mississippi (10%) and New York (13%) have the lowest share of new mid-wage jobs among states that have seen job increases.

    Generally, states with higher cost of living are at the bottom in mid-wage job growth, with the exception of Mississippi. (It’s worth noting 80% of new jobs in Mississippi have been low-wage).

    State Name 2013 Jobs New Jobs Since 2010 (Total) New Jobs Since 2010 (Mid-Wage) Share of New Jobs Since 2010 (Mid-Wage)
    Source: QCEW Employees, Non-QCEW Employees & Self-Employed – EMSI 2013.3 Class of Worker
    Wyoming 319,672 7,607 3,411 45%
    Iowa 1,689,811 58,987 21,902 37%
    North Dakota 492,918 71,607 25,970 36%
    Michigan 4,391,882 214,075 74,536 35%
    Arizona 2,805,158 155,430 53,115 34%
    Alaska 388,436 9,790 3,296 34%
    New Mexico 913,612 13,215 4,315 33%
    Oklahoma 1,786,664 66,837 21,153 32%
    Minnesota 3,007,618 128,418 39,433 31%
    Pennsylvania 6,215,891 123,999 37,616 30%
    Vermont 356,643 10,494 3,158 30%
    Hawaii 742,002 27,637 8,262 30%
    Kentucky 2,038,143 72,485 21,562 30%
    South Carolina 2,085,991 83,597 24,601 29%
    Wisconsin 2,989,657 60,737 17,661 29%
    Louisiana 2,143,399 64,696 18,736 29%
    Ohio 5,585,543 159,403 44,960 28%
    Indiana 3,160,881 146,127 40,050 27%
    Kansas 1,530,232 35,131 9,471 27%
    Colorado 2,668,013 153,362 40,122 26%
    Nebraska 1,059,262 28,648 7,430 26%
    Texas 12,485,450 904,317 226,927 25%
    Tennessee 3,061,383 144,846 34,657 24%
    Utah 1,408,139 112,919 26,974 24%
    California 17,523,783 913,413 208,707 23%
    Massachusetts 3,679,152 149,301 33,836 23%
    Oregon 1,908,085 66,034 14,817 22%
    North Carolina 4,564,124 202,606 45,008 22%
    Georgia 4,449,841 182,068 40,297 22%
    Montana 511,880 18,730 4,122 22%
    Maryland 2,881,471 103,598 22,439 22%
    Nevada 1,260,218 47,951 10,160 21%
    Idaho 724,549 26,236 5,250 20%
    South Dakota 472,376 12,811 2,476 19%
    District of Columbia 775,185 23,111 4,378 19%
    Washington 3,379,817 140,985 26,352 19%
    West Virginia 789,978 22,278 4,134 19%
    Arkansas 1,302,641 15,044 2,652 18%
    Illinois 6,243,694 178,096 30,999 17%
    Missouri 2,988,014 62,799 10,803 17%
    Maine 672,708 2,998 508 17%
    Delaware 453,952 12,810 2,133 17%
    Florida 8,370,099 373,274 61,868 17%
    Alabama 2,084,701 22,075 3,605 16%
    Connecticut 1,831,478 44,701 7,161 16%
    Virginia 4,175,545 133,765 19,079 14%
    New Jersey 4,211,361 104,096 14,478 14%
    New Hampshire 702,271 13,694 1,877 14%
    New York 9,602,939 325,490 43,591 13%
    Mississippi 1,255,654 22,961 2,236 10%
    Rhode Island 503,723 5,140 -46 –
    Total 150,645,641 6,080,429 1,502,652 25%

    Mid-Skill, Mid-Wage Occupations on the Rise

    The list of still-vibrant middle-wage jobs is long, and most typically require on-the-job training, work experience, or short-term certificates and degrees that community colleges specialize in. This includes customer service representatives (up 6%) and heavy/tractor-trailer truck drivers (up 7%), two occupations that have each added more than 118,000 estimated jobs since the start of 2010. Both offer solid, mid-tier earnings ($14.91 and $18.14 median hourly earnings, respectively).

    Other examples of strong mid-wage occupations:

    • Machinists have the best combination of total jobs added from 2010 to 2013 (nearly 50,000) and percentage job growth (14%). This occupation is just one of several on-the-rebound production fields: computer controlled machine tool operators (17% growth since 2010), welders (11%), and inspectors, testers, sorters, samplers, and weighers (8%) have also performed well post-recession.
    • The fastest-growing mid-wage jobs are clustered in energy fields, specifically oil and gas: roustabouts (38% growth since 2010), oil, gas, and mining service unit operators (38%), helpers of extraction workers (28%), and extraction workers, all other (22%). Next in percentage growth since 2010 are computer controlled machine tool operators (17%).

    These occupations are the cream of the crop in terms of recent job growth, and there are dozens of other viable mid-wage professions.

    Joshua Wright is an editor at EMSI, an Idaho-based economics firm that provides data and analysis to workforce boards, economic development agencies, higher education institutions, and the private sector. He manages the EMSI blog and is a freelance journalist. Contact him here.

  • Fast-Growing Mining and Oil & Gas Industries, and the Huge Number of Supply-Chain Jobs They Create

    The fastest-growing industry in the U.S since 2010 isn’t large or well-known. In fact, nearly half of the estimated 5,100 jobs in support activities for metal mining are located in one state: Nevada. Nonetheless, employment in this niche mining industry has ballooned 53% since 2010, and it creates a huge number of supply-chain jobs in other parts of the economy.

    Four of the five fastest-growing industries from 2010-2013, based on EMSI’s 2013.2 employment dataset, are related in some form to mining and oil & gas. These industries (e.g., oil & gas pipeline construction and support activities for oil & gas operations) have been carried by the boom in oil and natural gas production in pockets of the U.S., from North Dakota to Pennsylvania to Texas. And their growth has sparked new jobs in other sectors.

    This is especially the case for support activities for metal mining. For every job in this industry, another 6.1 supply-chain jobs are created elsewhere. That means the tiny industry accounts for a much more significant 36,180 jobs in all. (Note: This does not count the induced effects that come when employees and other income claimants spend what they make on food, clothes, and other goods and services.)

    NAICS Code Description 2013 Jobs % Change Since 2010 Supply-Chain Jobs Multiplier Total Supply-Chain Jobs
    Source: EMSI Wage-and-Salary and Self-Employed Workers (2013.2) and EMSI Input-Output Model
    213114 Support Activities for Metal Mining 5,103 53% 7.09 36,180
    212322 Industrial Sand Mining 5,241 49% 1.75 9,172
    237120 Oil and Gas Pipeline and Related Structures Construction 145,870 49% 1.68 245,062
    213112 Support Activities for Oil and Gas Operations 302,077 43% 2.15 649,466
    212234 Copper Ore and Nickel Ore Mining 15,109 37% 2.7 40,794
    532412 Construction, Mining, and Forestry Machinery and Equipment Rental and Leasing 70,151 36% 2.74 192,214
    333132 Oil and Gas Field Machinery and Equipment Manufacturing 78,502 32% 2.12 166,424
    212221 Gold Ore Mining 15,738 32% 1.86 29,273
    211112 Natural Gas Liquid Extraction 6,374 28% 1.85 11,792
    TOTAL 644,165 1,380,376

    Mining and similar extraction-based industries take a lot of equipment and materials to operate, so their growth is felt by a wide variety of suppliers. Altogether, the nine mining and oil & gas industries highlighted above — all of which have grown at least 28% since 2010 — account for 644,165 estimated jobs. And when you consider the spin-off jobs in their supply chain, the employment number more than doubles to 1,380,376. (As reader Gene Hayward calculated, when you add the direct and supply-chain jobs created since 2010, these nine industries account for nearly 600,000 total jobs created in three-plus years. Keep in mind EMSI’s 2013 job numbers are estimates and are based on historic and projected data).

    To understand what we mean by “supply-chain jobs,” it’s helpful to look at the different components of EMSI’s job multiplier:

    • Initial: Jobs in the focus industry (e.g., support activities for metal mining).
    • Direct: Jobs in the supplying industries.
    • Indirect: The subsequent ripple effect in further supply chains. These are the suppliers of the suppliers.
    • Induced: This change is due to the impact of the new earnings created by the initial, direct, and indirect changes (otherwise known as the income effect). These earnings enter the economy as employees spend their paychecks in the region on food, clothing, and other goods and services.

    As we mentioned earlier, we’ve only included the first three components in this analysis. These are the jobs directly related to these industries’ supply chains, and the indirect suppliers of their supply chain. So these industries, especially support activities for metal mining, have deep roots in the economy — the more they grow, the more the economy as a whole grows. But how do the supply-chain job multipliers in these mining and oil & gas industries compare to other export-based industries?

    Comparing Supply-Chain Multipliers

    Support activities for metal mining packs serious job-creation punch, and its 7.1 supply-chain job multiplier compares favorably with other industries with hefty multipliers. The largest supply-chain multiplier in the mainstream manufacturing sector belongs to light truck and utility vehicle manufacturing (a whopping 15.0), while cyclic crude and intermediate manufacturing and cheese manufacturing are both at 10.2. This means that every job in these these heavyweight sectors leads to between nine to 14 new jobs in the U.S.

    supplychainmultipliers

    Impressive. But various processing and refining industries have even larger supply-chain multipliers. The largest supply-chain multiplier in the U.S. is petroleum refineries (20.8), followed by soybean processing (19.1). What makes an industry’s multiplier so large (or so small)? Here’s an explanation from EMSI co-founder and chief economist Hank Robison:

    The size of supply-chain employment multipliers generally reflects a mix of three things: 1) the number and complexity of steps involved in producing the good, 2) capital requirements, and 3) the vertical integration of the production process (in a vertically integrated industry most of the production steps occur within the industry itself). Producing a quart of common motor oil provides a good example of a process resulting in a large employment multiplier. Producing refined oil products entails a complex many-stepped process – starting with exploration, and then drilling, oil field to refinery transportation, testing, treating and refining, and finally packaging of the end product. Oil refining is as capital intensive as it gets; refineries represent enormous capital investments, with sophisticated cracking towers, gauges, piping and more. And finally the production of refined oil products reflects a very disintegrated production process: the bulk of the labor embodied in the final product is added in the earlier production steps, e.g., in exploration, drilling, transport, etc. It is little wonder then that at 20.83, the supply-chain employment multiplier for the petroleum refining (NAICS 324110) sector is the largest of all employment multipliers in the US IO Model.

    Consider now an industry at the other end of the supply-chain employment multiplier spectrum, soil preparation, planting, and cultivating (NAICS 115112). Operating under contract from farmers, firms in this sector conduct a variety of basic farm support activities. Their capital investment in tractors, tillers and such is relatively modest, and they often use the equipment of the contracting farmer. Compared to manufacturing, and most other sectors, their production process entails few steps: buy some fuel, maybe some seed, and go to work. There is little room for vertical integration as they add all but the smallest sliver of the labor entailed in delivering their end product – season-ready land. It is little wonder that their supply-chain employment multiplier is a mere 1.02, one of the lowest of all supply-chain employment multipliers in the US IO Model.

    SupplyChainMultipliers_Low

    Joshua Wright is an editor at EMSI, an Idaho-based economics firm that provides data and analysis to workforce boards, economic development agencies, higher education institutions, and the private sector. He manages the EMSI blog and is a freelance journalist. Contact him here.

  • In the Spotlight: Higher Ed Degree Output by Field and Metro

    It might stem from the dot-com crash, the increased popularity of certifications and onsite employer training, or various other reasons. Regardless, the key finding from EMSI and CareerBuilder’s analysis of higher education degree output over the last decade is still eye-opening: Computer and IT degrees completed in the U.S. have declined 11% since 2003.

    The decrease in computer-related degrees comes at a time when the number of related computer and IT jobs grew 13% nationally, and while the number of degrees in other major fields — health, business, liberal arts and humanities, and engineering — has soared.

    Jobs-Degrees-Final

    Our analysis looked at the output of associate’s degrees and above nationally and for the nation’s largest 150 metro areas. Education completion data comes from the National Center of Education Statistics, via EMSI’s Analyst tool, and we matched the degrees to our jobs data using a customized program-to-occupation mapping. You can find a summary of the analysis in CareerBuilder’s release, and we’ve included more findings by field and metro below.

    Note: The NCES data comes from its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and accounts for all colleges and universities that participate or are applicants for any federal financial assistance program authorized by the Higher Education Act (HEA), which includes most of the well-known federal loans (e.g., Pell Grants, Stafford Loans). All public colleges and universities and a number of private postsecondary schools accept federal assistance loans and therefore are included in this analysis. We excluded Phoenix, Davenport, Iowa, and other cities whose higher ed output is dominated by large for-profit universities. 

    Computer and IT

    Computer-related degree output at U.S. universities and colleges flatlined from 2006 to 2009 and have steadily increased in the years since. But the fact remains: Total degree production (associate’s and above) was lower by almost 14,000 degrees in 2012 than in 2003. The biggest overall decreases came in three programs — computer science, computer and information sciences, general, and computer and information sciences and support services, other.

    This might reflect the surge in certifications and employer training programs, or the fact that some programmers can get jobs (or work independently) without a degree or formal training because their skills are in-demand.

    Of the 15 metros with the most computer and IT degrees in 2012, 10 saw decreases from their 2003 totals. That includes New York City (a 52% drop), San Francisco (55%), Atlanta (33%), Miami (32%), and Los Angeles (31%).

    Here’s a look at the performance of 20 largest metros with the most computer and IT degrees in 2012:

    MSA
    Computer/IT Degrees 2003
    Computer/IT Degrees 2012
    Growth/Decline
    % Growth/Decline
    Concentration
    New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA
    12,102
    5,793
    -6,309
    -52%
    0.86
    Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
    4,353
    5,697
    1,344
    31%
    2.32
    Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI
    5,403
    4,451
    -952
    -18%
    1.25
    Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
    5,088
    3,510
    -1,578
    -31%
    0.81
    Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH
    2,625
    2,455
    -170
    -6%
    0.92
    Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA
    3,321
    2,229
    -1,092
    -33%
    1.77
    Pittsburgh, PA
    2,073
    2,101
    28
    1%
    2.00
    Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI
    1,754
    2,003
    249
    14%
    1.24
    Baltimore-Towson, MD
    2,047
    1,931
    -116
    -6%
    1.85
    Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD
    2,316
    1,873
    -443
    -19%
    0.78
    Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
    2,037
    1,699
    -338
    -17%
    1.00
    Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL
    2,457
    1,670
    -787
    -32%
    0.75
    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
    1,793
    1,560
    -233
    -13%
    1.33
    Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC
    942
    1,413
    471
    50%
    2.15
    San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA
    1,573
    1,398
    -175
    -11%
    1.11
    Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI
    1,380
    1,332
    -48
    -3%
    1.42
    Indianapolis-Carmel, IN
    447
    1,223
    776
    174%
    1.63
    Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
    1,062
    1,165
    103
    10%
    1.00
    Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO
    1,673
    1,114
    -559
    -33%
    1.30
    Salt Lake City, UT
    486
    1,057
    571
    117%
    1.67

     

    Health Professions

    Health degrees have increased by 112% since 2003 — an addition of 288,194 total degrees. Related jobs in the U.S. have increased 18.6% over that time.

    Many metros have seen their output of health degrees at least double. This includes Los Angeles (109% growth), Miami (159%), and Minneapolis (193%).

    Here’s a look at the 20 largest metros with the most health degrees in 2012:

    MSA
    2003 Health Degrees
    2012 Heath Degrees
    Growth/Decline
    % Growth/Decline
    Concentration
    New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA
    16,363
    30,445
    14,082
    86%
    0.94
    Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
    7,681
    16,031
    8,350
    109%
    0.77
    Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI
    7,622
    14,128
    6,506
    85%
    0.83
    Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL
    5,438
    14,068
    8,630
    159%
    1.31
    Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD
    7,593
    13,554
    5,961
    79%
    1.19
    Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH
    6,483
    11,513
    5,030
    78%
    0.90
    St. Louis, MO-IL
    3,500
    9,760
    6,260
    179%
    1.65
    Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI
    2,959
    8,673
    5,714
    193%
    1.12
    Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
    3,137
    7,039
    3,902
    124%
    0.86
    Indianapolis-Carmel, IN
    1,764
    6,911
    5,147
    292%
    1.92
    Pittsburgh, PA
    3,316
    6,480
    3,164
    95%
    1.29
    Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
    2,978
    6,227
    3,249
    109%
    0.53
    Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
    3,142
    5,916
    2,774
    88%
    1.06
    Baltimore-Towson, MD
    3,241
    5,857
    2,616
    81%
    1.17
    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
    2,965
    5,857
    2,892
    98%
    0.87
    Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
    1,661
    5,593
    3,932
    237%
    1.13
    Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI
    2,790
    5,543
    2,753
    99%
    1.23
    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
    2,519
    4,932
    2,413
    96%
    0.88
    Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN
    1,829
    4,930
    3,101
    170%
    1.38
    Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO
    2,172
    4,696
    2,524
    116%
    1.14

     

    The number of registered nursing degrees has gone from 88,482 in 2003 to 193,528 in 2012, a 119% increase. Registered nursing is the third-largest degree-awarding program in the U.S., behind business administration and liberal arts and humanities.

    RN_Chart

    Engineering (and Engineering Technologies)

    The are 37,138 more engineering and engineering technology degrees in 2012 than 2003, a 37% increase. Related jobs in the U.S. have increased 5.7% during that time. The biggest degree increases have come in biomedical engineering, mechanical engineering, and civil engineering.

    Tulsa has seen the largest percentage increase (222%) of engineering/engineering technology degrees among the 150 largest metros. What explains the huge jump? It mostly stems from a massive increase in output of engineering technology degrees in the area. For example, the Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology in Tulsa produced 454 engineering tech degrees in 2003, up from 57 in 2003.

    In San Jose, Ann Arbor, Raleigh, and Tulsa, at least 15% all associate’s-and-above degrees awarded are in engineering or engineering technologt. Raleigh has the highest concentration at 17%. The national share is 5%, so Raleigh’s concentration index is 3.36 — meaning it’s more than three times as concentrated as the national average (1.00).

    The following table gives the metros with the highest concentration of engineering and engineering technology degrees:

    MSA
    Engineering Degrees (2003)
    Engineering Degrees (2012)
    Growth/Decline
    Concentration
    Raleigh-Cary, NC
    2,091
    2,201
    5%
    3.36
    Tulsa, OK
    335
    1,079
    222%
    3.22
    San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
    2,809
    3,472
    24%
    3.08
    Ann Arbor, MI
    2,220
    2,881
    30%
    2.99
    Huntsville, AL
    409
    691
    69%
    2.75
    Dayton, OH
    1,003
    1,504
    50%
    2.25
    Worcester, MA
    568
    1,088
    92%
    2.23
    Greenville-Mauldin-Easley, SC
    715
    1,059
    48%
    2.13
    Baton Rouge, LA
    839
    1,019
    21%
    2.13
    Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR-MO
    366
    660
    80%
    2.02
    Salinas, CA
    262
    506
    93%
    1.91
    Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA
    329
    362
    10%
    1.82
    Peoria, IL
    231
    309
    34%
    1.72
    Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ
    884
    741
    -16%
    1.68
    Knoxville, TN
    597
    839
    41%
    1.67
    Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA
    2,851
    3,633
    27%
    1.67
    Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX
    1,741
    2,136
    23%
    1.65
    Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL
    286
    450
    57%
    1.62
    Pittsburgh, PA
    2,611
    2,886
    11%
    1.59
    Flint, MI
    488
    492
    1%
    1.58
    Beaumont-Port Arthur, TX
    293
    373
    27%
    1.56
    Wichita, KS
    329
    462
    40%
    1.55
    Madison, WI
    1,320
    1,314
    0%
    1.53
    York-Hanover, PA
    156
    151
    -3%
    1.50
    Toledo, OH
    874
    891
    2%
    1.50

     

    Education

    Education degrees have increased 18% since 2003. That’s an increase of 52,391 from 2003 to 2012. Related jobs in the U.S. have increased 6.3% from 2003-2012.

    Education degrees make up 8.8% of all associate’s-and-above completions nationally, down from 10.6% in 2003. The highest concentration belongs to Beaumont-Port Arthur, Texas, with 4.4 times the national average of education degrees.

    Another Texas metro, El Paso, has seen a 346% increase in education degrees since 2003, while Denver (170%), Minneapolis-St. Paul (125%), Austin (114%), and Dallas (106%) have also seen major gains.

    Ed-degrees

    Business, Management and Marketing

    There are 176,972 more degrees nationally in 2012 than 2003, a 33% increase. Related jobs in the U.S. have increased 1.2 percent from 2003-2012, an addition of 218,173 jobs.

    Nearly 1 in 5 degrees awarded in the U.S. (18.1%) are in business, management and marketing, the highest share of any major field of study. For many large metros, business degrees make up a sizable percentage of total higher education output (25% of all degrees in Chicago and Milwaukee, 24% in Washington, D.C., and 23% in Atlanta).

    MSA
    2012 Business, Managament, Marketing Degrees
    Share of Total Degrees
    Concentration
    Colorado Springs, CO
    5,099
    33%
    1.85
    Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI
    1,939
    30%
    1.67
    Fort Wayne, IN
    1,388
    30%
    1.65
    Montgomery, AL
    946
    29%
    1.62
    Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI
    30,741
    25%
    1.39
    Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI
    4,892
    25%
    1.36
    Canton-Massillon, OH
    843
    24%
    1.34
    Flint, MI
    1,506
    24%
    1.34
    Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA
    3,368
    24%
    1.34
    Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
    20,098
    24%
    1.31
    St. Louis, MO-IL
    9,943
    23%
    1.29
    Columbia, SC
    2,529
    23%
    1.29
    Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA
    9,853
    23%
    1.25
    Columbus, OH
    6,600
    23%
    1.25
    South Bend-Mishawaka, IN-MI
    1,561
    22%
    1.24

     

    Liberal Arts and Humanities

    The U.S. produced 124,681 more degrees in 2012 than 2003, a 47% increase. This is the third fastest-growing degree category in the U.S. by total degrees added, behind health professions and business, management, and marketing.

    Liberal arts and humanities degrees make up 10% of all associate’s-and-above completions, roughly the same share as in 2003. Of the 10 metros with the highest concentrations of these degrees, seven are in Florida — led by Ocala (66% of all degrees), Port St. Lucie (64%), and North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota (50%).

    Despite growth in many metros, notable decreases in liberal arts and humanities degrees have occurred in Tulsa (51% decline), San Jose (38%), San Diego (30%), San Francisco (23%), and Ann Arbor (20%).

    LibArts

    Joshua Wright is an editor at EMSI, an Idaho-based economics firm that provides data and analysis to workforce boards, economic development agencies, higher education institutions, and the private sector. He manages the EMSI blog and is a freelance journalist. Contact him here.

    Illustration by Mark Beauchamp.

  • Manufacturing in Los Angeles: A Test Case in Why Increasing Concentration Isn’t Always a Positive

    What comes to mind when you think of Los Angeles’ big industries? Motion pictures and other entertainment sectors, yes. Real estate and corporate headquarters, too. But probably not manufacturing.

    No other sector, however, contributes more to the Los Angeles metro area’s gross regional product – the final market value of all goods and services in a region – than manufacturing. It accounted for 11% of L.A.’s GRP in 2012, narrowly beating out the real estate and rental and leasing sector (10%).

    Manufacturing is also the fourth-largest major industry sector in Los Angeles by employment, with nearly 535,000 jobs. But the manufacturing labor market has taken a beating in L.A. — and the downward spiral began years before the Great Recession. In 2001, in fact, manufacturing was the largest sector in L.A., accounting for more than 800,000 jobs, many of which were centered in two sub-industries: computer/electronic products and apparel.

    The Apparel Manufacturing Story

    Apparel manufacturing is a particularly interesting case study for L.A. manufacturing as a whole. Nearly 10% of all manufacturing jobs in the Los Angeles metro — a little over 52,000 —  are in this subsector. And 40% of workers in apparel manufacturing are sewing machine operators whose overall median earnings in L.A. are $9.48 per hour.

    ApparelMfg

    Jobs in apparel manufacturing have declined 43% in Los Angeles since 2001, a reduction of some 40,000 jobs. But nationally, the industry has fared worse; it’s lost 63% of its workforce since 2001. This explains why the concentration of apparel manufacturing jobs in L.A., as measured by location quotient, is actually increasing, despite the heavy local cutbacks.

    ApparelMfg2L.A. has 7.8 times the national average of these jobs, after having 4.9 times the national average in 2001. Looking at it another way, a third of all apparel manufacturing jobs in America are in the Los Angeles metro (and 89% of these jobs in California are in L.A.).

    Why has L.A.’s concentration increased so much? Because location quotient compares the industry’s share of regional employment with its share of national employment. In this case, apparel manufacturing is dwindling as a share of all jobs nationally and in L.A. But the rate of decline hasn’t been as sharp in Los Angeles as it has been in the nation.

    In many cases, a high concentration like apparel manufacturing’s in L.A. signals that it’s a key local industry. And to be sure, apparel manufacturing still has a large presence and helps bring money into the region. Further, there are sub-industries inside apparel manufacturing that are adding jobs. But this is an example of why increasing concentration isn’t always a positive.

    Many firms have moved apparel manufacturing operations overseas, and the jobs that have remained in the U.S. are mostly unappealing: low-wage, low-skill, with little career potential. In L.A., the average earnings per job in apparel manufacturing is $44,859 — a figure that includes workers at all levels, from management to the production floor. That annual salary is only slightly higher than the national average ($43,947).

    Compare the above numbers to industries with increasing employment and increasingconcentration. The following are some of the real emerging industries in L.A., and most pay well, too:

    • Other scientific and technical consulting services, a professional services industry that has doubled in concentration since 2001 and added the third-most jobs of any detailed industry in L.A. over that time. This industry pays $60,828 per job and has gone from 6,900 jobs in 2001 to over 42,000 in 2013.
    • Port and harbor operations. This industry is 14 times more concentrated in L.A. than the nation, and it’s grown 27% since 2001. (Plus, average earnings are $111,650.)
    • Surgical and medical instrument manufacturing, which has more than doubled in employment and concentration in L.A. And it requires a diverse and mostly high-skilled workforce that is paid well.

    And while it’s hard to label entertainment industries in L.A. as “emerging,” there are a stream of related industries that fit the criteria of high growth and increasing specialization. Most notably, teleproduction and other postproduction services (11.5 times more concentrated than nation; 19% growth), motion picture and video production (10.3 times more concentrated; 31% growth, though it’s declined 2008), and agents and managers for artists, athletes, entertainers, and other public figures (7 times more concentrated; 59% growth) fit that mold.

    Other Manufacturing Sectors in L.A.

    We’ve focused on apparel manufacturing, and briefly touched on surgical and medical instrument manufacturing. The performance of other detailed manufacturing industries is also worth noting. In all, 352 of the 472 manufacturing subsectors classified by the U.S. Census Bureau have lost jobs since 2001 in Los Angeles. The two most notable declines have come aircraft manufacturing (-16,502 jobs, a 50% loss) and search, detection, navigation, guidance, aeronautical, and nautical system and instrument manufacturing (-15,664 jobs, a 42% loss). Both used to be major industries in L.A., and both have bled high-paying jobs.

    But there are growth areas in L.A.’s manufacturing scene. The following table shows 17 detailed industries that have added at least 500 jobs since 2001 in L.A., topped by surgical and medical instrument manufacturing:

    NAICS Code Description 2001 Jobs 2013 Jobs Change % Change 2001 National Location Quotient 2013 National Location Quotient 2013 Avg. Earnings Per Job 2012 Establishments
    Source: QCEW Employees, Non-QCEW Employees & Self-Employed – EMSI 2013.2 Class of Worker
    339112 Surgical and Medical Instrument Manufacturing 4,861 11,268 6,407 132% 1.05 2.15 $128,685 82
    315232 Women’s and Girls’ Cut and Sew Blouse and Shirt Manufacturing 2,151 7,046 4,895 228% 6.43 21.26 $49,550 165
    336414 Guided Missile and Space Vehicle Manufacturing 8,131 11,594 3,463 43% 3.54 5.11 $157,273 29
    312111 Soft Drink Manufacturing 3,089 5,398 2,309 75% 0.81 1.71 $86,690 29
    339116 Dental Laboratories 3,749 6,026 2,277 61% 1.63 2.8 $56,424 345
    311991 Perishable Prepared Food Manufacturing 1,581 3,666 2,085 132% 1.62 2.35 $39,344 50
    311941 Mayonnaise, Dressing, and Other Prepared Sauce Manufacturing 476 1,429 953 200% 0.86 2.46 $68,096 19
    334419 Other Electronic Component Manufacturing 4,647 5,563 916 20% 1.19 2.18 $80,262 90
    311811 Retail Bakeries 6,339 7,156 817 13% 1.8 2.08 $26,520 488
    336112 Light Truck and Utility Vehicle Manufacturing 13 805 792 6092% 0 0.45 $73,522 5
    333996 Fluid Power Pump and Motor Manufacturing 1,247 2,022 775 62% 1.26 2.52 $108,005 13
    332722 Bolt, Nut, Screw, Rivet, and Washer Manufacturing 6,906 7,677 771 11% 3.19 4.83 $78,025 65
    332912 Fluid Power Valve and Hose Fitting Manufacturing 3,042 3,659 617 20% 1.56 2.41 $96,089 46
    336415 Guided Missile and Space Vehicle Propulsion Unit and Propulsion Unit Parts Manufacturing 425 957 532 125% 0.82 2.2 $125,893 6
    335129 Other Lighting Equipment Manufacturing 780 1,305 525 67% 1.37 3.39 $68,257 31
    331111 Iron and Steel Mills 503 1,020 517 103% 0.1 0.27 $55,782 37
    334510 Electromedical and Electrotherapeutic Apparatus Manufacturing 4,623 5,135 512 11% 2 2.15 $99,271 70

     

    Notice the second industry on the list — women’s and girls’ cut and sew blouse and shirt manufacturing. It’s part of the declining apparel manufacturing sector, but it’s one of the rare growth subsectors that we mentioned above. And also of note is guided missile and space vehicle manufacturing, which has made an 86% jump in jobs since 2010 and pays big wages. This industry would no doubt also fall in the emerging category, given it’s increasing concentration and employment.

    Joshua Wright is an editor at EMSI, an Idaho-based economics firm that provides data and analysis to workforce boards, economic development agencies, higher education institutions, and the private sector. He manages the EMSI blog and is a freelance journalist. Contact him here.

  • The Associate’s Degree Payoff: Community College Grads Can Get High-Paying Jobs, and Here Are Some Examples

    For some students, the decision to enroll at a community college is simple. A two-year school offers the credential they need at a much lower cost than a university, and the earnings post-degree are on par with — or better than — what they would make after going to a four-year school.

    Less debt, similar salary — the math adds up.

    But outside fields that require specific certificates or degrees, it’s not always clear to students which higher education path they should take. And as Jeffrey Selingo wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal weekend essay, a number of websites are cropping up that allow students and parents to compare the return on investment from college to college.

    Based on first-year salaries of graduates (one of the metrics included at CollegeMeasures.org via state unemployment insurance programs), Selingo points out that some community college degrees have been shown to have a stronger early return than bachelor’s degrees.

    Think a community-college degree is worth less than a credential from a four-year college? In Tennessee, the average first-year salaries of graduates with a two-year degree are $1,000 higher than those with a bachelor’s degree. Technical degree holders from the state’s community collegesss often earn more their first year out than those who studied the same field at a four-year university.

    Take graduates in health professions from Dyersburg State Community College. They not only finish two years earlier than their counterparts at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, but they also earn $5,300 more, on average, in their first year after graduation.

    This isn’t new information by any means. In 2011, the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, an EMSI client, released its well-publicized “College Payoff” report. Anthony Carnevale and his colleagues looked at median lifetime earnings — a key distinction from the sources that Selingo cites — for all educations levels by occupation to show that 28.2% of associate’s degree graduates out-earn bachelor’s degree holders. This is just one example of what Georgetown referred to as “earnings overlap” (see the following chart).

    Georgetown’s report provides clear evidence that degree level matters when it comes to lifetime earnings. But another critical element is the actual job that a person chooses.

    There are many fields — in healthcare, engineering, technology, manufacturing, etc. — in which associate’s degree graduates can make just as much or more than bachelor’s degree holders. But what specific careers are we talking about? Let’s take a look using the Georgetown study and EMSI data.

    Well-Paying Jobs That (Often) Take an Associate’s Degree to Get

    To get a sense of the top-earning jobs in which the majority of workers have an associate’s degree, we looked the educational attainment breakdown by detailed occupation from U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, via EMSI’s Analyst. This data is only available at the national level; the most recent numbers are from 2009 (see here).

    The following occupations are ones in which associate’s degree holders (or associate’s degree plus some college) comprise the largest percentage of workers. Note that the educational attainment varies for most occupations (e.g., most CEOs have a bachelor’s, some have a master’s, a few have less than a high school diploma). Also, the educational requirements for some occupations change over time. For registered nurses, the typical education needed for entry, as assigned by the BLS, is an associate’s degree — even though 43% of all nurses hold a four-year degree. For this reason, we excluded RNs from our analysis. (We also excluded air traffic controllers because only 14% have an associate’s degree).

    1. Radiation Therapists ($37.36 median hourly earnings)

    Associate’s degree holders make up 42% of this healthcare occupation, slightly higher than bachelor’s degree grads (38%). For both degree levels, workers in this field earn $2.1 million in their lifetimes, per Georgetown. And the job outlook is strong, too. Radiation therapist jobs have increased 14% nationally since 2001, and the female-dominated occupation is projected to grow another 6% from 2012-2015.

    2. Dental Hygienists ($34.77)

    The bulk of hygienists (57%) have associate’s degrees, followed next by bachelor’s degrees (30%). Georgetown lumped these workers in with other healthcare practitioners and technical occupations, but still the lifetime earnings are similar — $2.1 million for two-year degree holders; $2.2 million for four-year grads.

    This lucrative, female-dominated occupation is projected to grow 8% from 2012-2015.


    3. Nuclear Medicine Technologists ($33.96)

    Far and away the largest chunk of workers in this field have associate’s degrees (45%). Although nuclear medicine technologists are not included in the Georgetown report, associate’s degree holders among a larger subset of workers, diagnostic related technologists and technicians, earn $2.2 million in their lifetimes, compared to $2.4 million among bachelor’s degree grads.

    4. Nuclear Technicians ($32.85)

    The first non-healthcare field on our list, these workers are not to be confused with nuclear medicine technologists. Nearly 45% of these workers have an associate’s degree or some college, compared to 24% who have bachelor’s degrees and 23% who have a high school diploma or equivalent. (Note: Georgetown does not report lifetime earnings at the two-year level for nuclear technicians).

    More than a third of fewer than 9,000 nuclear technicians in the U.S. work in two specific industries — electric power distribution and fossil fuel electric power generation.

    5. Diagnostic Medical Sonographers ($31.83)

    Similar to No. 3 on our list, nuclear medicine technologists, 45% of workers in this field have an associate’s degree.

    This field has seen a 63% increase in jobs since 2001, from 34,752 to an estimated 56,514. And it’s projected to grow another 12% from 2012-2015.

    6. Aerospace Engineering and Operations Technicians ($29.48)

    Only 23% of these workers have associate’s degree, but another 33% have some college/no degree, which is why the typical education needed to enter this occupation (as assigned by the BLS) is an associate’s degree.

    Unlike the previous occupations on this list, the job market for aerospace techs isn’t so rosy. Employment in this field declined 16% from 2001-2012 (with the bulk of the jobs losses from 2001-2003 and 2008-2010). It’s projected to decline by 2% from 2012-2015.

    7. Engineering Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other ($28.54)

    Like aerospace technicians, more than half of these workers (56%) have either an associate’s degree or some college/no degree. But unlike the above occupation, this field is growing: employment increased 5% from 2001-2012 and is projected to go up 4% from 2012-2015.

    8. Respiratory Therapists ($27.04)

    A whopping 56% of respiratory therapists hold an associate’s degree, followed by 24% with a bachelor’s degree. The lifetimes earnings, as reported by Georgetown, are the same as for radiation therapists: $2.1 million for both degree levels.

    This is one of the strongest-performing associate’s degree occupations. The U.S. had 28% more respiratory therapists in 2012 than in 2001, and the field is projected to grow 8% through 2015.

    Note: This list doesn’t include the many high-paying jobs available through vocational technical education. Plumbers, electricians, welders — and an array of other skilled trades — often offer better wages than bachelor’s degree-required fields. See our piece on the aging skilled trades workforce here.

    Joshua Wright is an editor at EMSI, an Idaho-based economics firm that provides data and analysis to workforce boards, economic development agencies, higher education institutions, and the private sector. He manages the EMSI blog and is a freelance journalist. Contact him here.

  • The Average Manufacturing Establishment Is Smaller Than You Think, and Getting Smaller

    The common image of American manufacturing, as Harold L. Sirkin wrote in Bloomberg Businessweek, is of huge plants with waves of assembly-line workers producing cars and refrigerators. But there’s a whole other world of niche manufacturers in the U.S., and these small firms are more typical — and should be more of a priority, Sirkin argued — than you might think.

    Some 250,000 manufacturers in the U.S. have fewer than 500 employees. Studies show these smaller businesses produce more innovations per employee than large manufacturers. And truth be told, it is generally from these small companies that the jobs of the future will spring. Indeed, as David Rocks and Nick Leiber observed last summer, smaller manufacturers have been leading the “reshoring” wave that my colleagues and I have been writing about.

    The average manufacturing establishment was home to 35.3 jobs in 2012, according to EMSI’s 2013.2 dataset. That’s larger than retail trade (14.4 jobs per establishment), finance and insurance (11.9), and the average size across all industries (15.7 jobs, as the following chart from the BLS shows).

    But like all establishments, manufacturing work sites are getting smaller — dramatically smaller, in fact, over the last 12 years.

    Note: An establishment is a single physical location of some type of economic activity — in other words, a business. A single company may have multiple establishments.

    In 2001, the average manufacturing establishment had 41.8 jobs. By 2007, it was 38.3. And in 2012, as we mentioned, it was 35.3.

    Part of the substantial drop in the last five years is likely the result of the recession — a period in which many employers go through a “cleansing,” as mentioned in a 2012 paper by the Eleanor Choi and James Spletzer of the BLS. The two economists also concluded, when looking across the board, that “establishments are starting smaller and staying smaller. The average size of establishment births (new startups, excluding seasonal businesses) in the 1990s was around 7.6 employees, whereas the average size of births fell from 6.8 employees in 2001 to 4.7 employees in 2011.”

    Another notable trend: Since 2010, job growth in manufacturing has predominantly been in sub-sectors with larger-than-average establishment sizes. Consider this table:

    NAICS Code Description 2012 Jobs 2010-12 % Job Change 2012 Establishments Jobs Per Establishments (2012)
    Source: QCEW Employees – EMSI 2013.2 Class of Worker BETA
    331 Primary Metal Manufacturing 399,767 11% 5,658 70.7
    333 Machinery Manufacturing 1,090,723 10% 29,015 37.6
    336 Transportation Equipment Manufacturing 1,445,062 9% 14,282 101.2
    332 Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing 1,391,954 9% 58,067 24.0
    316 Leather and Allied Product Manufacturing 29,436 5% 1,255 23.5
    335 Electrical Equipment, Appliance, and Component Manufacturing 370,810 4% 7,341 50.5
    326 Plastics and Rubber Products Manufacturing 641,042 3% 13,090 49.0
    312 Beverage and Tobacco Product Manufacturing 189,476 3% 5,918 32.0
    339 Miscellaneous Manufacturing 575,852 2% 30,936 18.6
    311 Food Manufacturing 1,457,721 1% 29,334 49.7
    334 Computer and Electronic Product Manufacturing 1,096,643 0% 18,795 58.3
    325 Chemical Manufacturing 784,101 0% 16,180 48.5
    324 Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing 111,472 0% 2,387 46.7
    313 Textile Mills 118,205 -1% 3,065 38.6
    321 Wood Product Manufacturing 334,995 -1% 14,594 23.0
    327 Nonmetallic Mineral Product Manufacturing 365,302 -1% 16,575 22.0
    337 Furniture and Related Product Manufacturing 351,304 -1% 18,743 18.7
    322 Paper Manufacturing 380,900 -3% 5,714 66.7
    314 Textile Product Mills 115,898 -3% 7,198 16.1
    315 Apparel Manufacturing 149,036 -5% 7,279 20.5
    323 Printing and Related Support Activities 461,503 -5% 30,499 15.1
    Total 11,861,203 3% 335,924 35.3

    Primary metal manufacturing, which includes foundries and steel mills, grew the most from 2010 to 2012 — 11%, which equates to nearly 39,000 new jobs. It has the second-most jobs per establishment (70.7) among all manufacturing sub-sectors. Transportation equipment manufacturing had the third-fastest growth rate, at 9%, and it has the most jobs per establishment (101.2).

    At the bottom of the table are printing and related support activities, apparel manufacturing, and textile product mills. All three have jobs-per-establishments ratios of 20.5 or fewer, far below the 35.3 average.

    This isn’t to say that there’s a clear relationship between establishment size and employment growth; the results are too varied to make that declaration (see fabricated metal product manufacturing), and statistical analysis doesn’t bear that out. But at a time when establishments are shrinking, most of the best-performing manufacturing industries are ones that still have sizable establishments.

    Joshua Wright is an editor at EMSI, an Idaho-based economics firm that provides data and analysis to workforce boards, economic development agencies, higher education institutions, and the private sector. He manages the EMSI blog and is a freelance journalist. Contact him here.

  • The Value of a Liberal Arts Education in Landing a Job

    North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory made waves when he said on syndicated radio that he wants to encourage the funding of four-year programs that align with the job market — not those, like gender studies, that do little to help a graduate’s employment prospects.

    This was covered in a pointed column for The Wall Street Journal by Jane Shaw, the president of the John William Pope Center of Higher Education Policy in Raleigh, N.C. Shaw supports McCrory’s attempt to roil the higher education establishment and get students — heaven forbid — thinking about job prospects when they pick a major:

    Referring specifically to North Carolina’s 16-campus state university system, Mr. McCrory wondered if state funding incentives should encourage areas of study that align with the job market. Other disciplines, such as gender studies, Mr. McCrory said, might be subsidized less. The funding formula, he said perhaps a bit indelicately, should not be based on the number of “butts in seats, but how many of those butts can get jobs.”

    The education establishment immediately went bonkers. The pundits piled on. But Mr. McCrory raised a legitimate concern. And the solution he proposed, sketchy as it is at this stage, is not a bad one.

    The truth is: Elite universities, such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, are doing a disservice when they lead students into majors with few, if any, job prospects. Stating such truths doesn’t mean you’re antagonistic to the liberal arts.

    This discussion — and the one we contributed to last year after Viriginia Postrel’s column for Bloomberg — got us thinking: just how valuable is a liberal arts education in landing a job and contributing in the business world? Because EMSI works with so many community and technical colleges, we’re all for matching educational programs to in-demand fields. (In fact, we’ve developed a tool, Career Coach, that does just that.) For schools that specialize in offering associate’s and certificate programs, data-driven program assessment makes sense — and it helps students, colleges, and the regions that colleges serve.

    But what about universities like the University of North Carolina, which McCrory chose to use an example? It’s much trickier to link gender studies, history, or some other liberal arts degree to an actual career. But these graduates — in theory — are getting a more well-rounded education than they would get at a vocational school, and they should have the critical thinking, analytical, and writing skills valuable in the marketplace.

    Or do they?

    In criticizing American higher education institutions, Shaw writes, “Many liberal-arts graduates, even from the best schools, aren’t getting jobs in large part because they didn’t learn much in school. They can’t write or speak well or intelligently analyze what they read.” If this is the case, these students are bound to get a poor education regardless of what they major in.

    However, as Postrel mentioned in her column last year, the students who flow into well-regarded schools and the majors that result in well-paying jobs, like some STEM degrees, “have the aptitudes, attitudes, values and interests that draw them to those fields (which themselves vary greatly in content and current job prospects).” And as Anthony Carnevale at Georgetown showed in a study last year, the unemployment rate for graduates of certain scientific or technical fields isn’t any better, and sometimes it’s worse, than the rate for graduates who major in education or the humanities (see above chart).

    We looked at completions data from the National Center for Education Statistics to get a sense of the top educational programs for graduates from 2003 to 2011 among all award levels. First, here’s the top 10 programs in the U.S. Liberal arts comes in second — just under 50,000 completions short of business administration — while psychology, cosmetology, and general studies are also hugely popular.

    But what’s striking is to look at the same chart for North Carolina. Notice the huge growth in liberal arts degrees — from 4,111 in 2003 to 8,778 in 2011. And since the recession, the rate of students graduating in liberal arts fields has picked up, not slowed down like you might think.

    Based on this data, perhaps McCrory has a point. North Carolina has far outpaced the nation in terms of the proportion of liberal arts degree it awards. But the real question in this debate is, what kind of education are these students getting? If it’s as lousy as Shaw depicts, and if they’re not aggressively pursuing internships and other career-advancing opportunities while in school, many of these graduates are in for a tough time no matter what.

    Joshua Wright is an editor at EMSI, an Idaho-based economics firm that provides data and analysis to workforce boards, economic development agencies, higher education institutions, and the private sector. He manages the EMSI blog and is a freelance journalist. Contact him here.

    Lead illustration by Mark Beauchamp.

  • The Rise of Management Consultants

    The always-entertaining Freakonomics podcast recently devoted a full episode to the emergence of management consulting firms in the U.S. The podcast got our attention right away when Stephen Dubner rattled off labor market statistics — something that always piques our interest — for management consultants.

    DUBNER: Raise your hand if you know somebody who works as a consultant. Yeah, I thought so – pretty much everybody. There are more than 500,000 management consultants in the U.S. – more than 700,000 if you count the self-employed. And there are even more on the way. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the consulting field will grow another 22 percent over the next decade, which means there will be more new jobs for consultants than there will be for computer programmers or lawyers. Now, how does consulting pay? Quite well, thank you. A median salary of about $78,000. That’s more than architects, postsecondary teachers, and a lot of scientists and engineers.

    What Dubner referred to as management consultants are actually known, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as management analysts (SOC 13-1111). In this post we’ll explore the growth of this field, especially among those who work as self-employed or contract consultants, and where it’s grown the most (hint: Washington, D.C. and state capitals with government-heavy workforces).

    Overview of Management Analysts

    Management consulting firms specialize in solving companies’ problems and providing outside advice. And judging by the uptick in employment, they’re providing more of this expertise. The number of management analysts — the wage-and-salary variety who work as employees for big or little firms — has grown 13% since 2001 (from just over 500,000 jobs to an estimated 566,282 in 2012). Approximately 62% of these workers are men, and as Dubner points out, they tend to be young (55% are 25-44 years old). Their median salary is indeed about $79,000 per year ($37.74 per hour), and their wage curve steepens quickly for the top percentile of workers ($68.16 per hour, or nearly $142,000).

    But would you guess that there are more self-employed and extended proprietors than salaried employees in this field? Check out EMSI’s class-of-worker breakdown for management analysts:

    • Salaried employees: 566,282 jobs, 13% growth since 2001
    • Self-employed: 155,801 jobs, 52% growth since 2001
    • Extended proprietors: 462,005, 77% growth since 2001

    Taken together, there are nearly 1.2 million management analyst jobs in the workforce, and 617,807 of those are in the self-employed or extended proprietor category. And as you can see from our breakdown, those last two segments of workers have seen immense growth since 2001, almost all of which occurred before the recession.

    Why So Many Self-Employed and Extended Proprietors?

    What’s driving the huge number of self-employed and extended proprietors in management consulting? One possible explanation is that as business executives near retirement, they start working on their own — or on a contract basis with firms — as management analysts. Consider that 62% of the self-employed and extended proprietors in the field are at least 55 years or old (and 25% are 65 and above). That’s a drastic difference from the age breakdown of salaried workers, as illustrated in the following chart.

    Note: What we refer to as “extended proprietors” are workers who are counted as proprietors, but classify the income as peripheral to their primary employment. Many industries (primarily oil & gas extraction, finance & insurance, and real estate) include people who are considered sole proprietors or part of a partnership, yet have little or no involvement or income in the venture. Read more here.


    The Geography of Management Analysts

    Two of the largest management consulting firms, Boston Consulting Group and Bain, are headquartered in Boston. But the epicenter for management analysts is the Washington, D.C. metro. For salaried employees, the nation’s capital is 4.4 times more concentrated with management analysts than the national average. Overall, D.C. has an estimated 87,486 of these jobs — about the same number as the Boston and Los Angeles metro areas put together.

    D.C. is also the most saturated with self-employed and extended proprietors, with more than twice the national average. But as the table below shows, San Francisco, San Jose, Boston, and Bridgeport, among others, have much larger percentages of independent management analysts as compared to the total workers in the field in each metro. And when it comes to proprietor growth, Atlanta — the second-most concentrated metro overall — has added a whopping 140% since 2001, compared a more tepid 7% among salaried employees.

    Smaller metros also have significant shares of management analysts. Looking at just salaried employees, Madison, Wis., Richmond and Virginia Beach, Va., and Harrisburg, Pa. are among the 10 most concentrated metros.

    The bottom line: Metros with a considerable presence of government workers — state capitals and D.C. — have higher saturations of these workers than metros of comparable size.

    The following map is for all U.S. metros and shows the percentage job growth since 2001 (ranging from 306% growth to 73% decline). Notice the overwhelmingly widespread growth, with a few pockets of job loss.

    MANAGEMENT ANALYSTS – LARGEST 100 METROS
    Salaried Employees Self-Employed and Ext. Proprietors
    MSA Name 2001 Jobs 2012 Jobs Job Change % Job Growth 2012 Conc. Median Hourly Earnings 2001 Jobs 2012 Jobs Job Change % Job Growth Median Hourly Earnings 2012 Conc. Proportion of Total Workforce
    Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 40,607 56,751 16,144 40% 4.44 $45.37 14,538 27,124 12,586 87% $33.49 2.25 32%
    Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA 21,430 23,013 1,583 7% 2.43 $41.06 6,206 14,913 8,707 140% $29.67 1.16 39%
    Madison, WI 2,367 2,938 571 24% 2.07 $32.72 1,000 1,753 753 75% $21.05 1.4 37%
    Richmond, VA 4,468 5,151 683 15% 2 $38.93 1,229 2,478 1,249 102% $24.01 1.1 32%
    Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC 4,963 5,986 1,023 21% 1.76 $36.96 1,390 2,674 1,284 92% $25.60 1.08 31%
    Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH 16,997 17,469 472 3% 1.7 $45.44 11,925 17,955 6,030 51% $32.90 1.86 51%
    Harrisburg-Carlisle, PA 2,106 2,210 104 5% 1.68 $30.40 601 937 336 56% $28.38 1.05 30%
    Baltimore-Towson, MD 7,504 8,876 1,372 18% 1.63 $42.86 4,041 7,403 3,362 83% $26.70 1.4 45%
    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 12,255 13,547 1,292 11% 1.6 $45.77 12,990 20,311 7,321 56% $34.46 1.87 60%
    Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA 1,954 2,185 231 12% 1.6 $30.50 643 1,139 496 77% $31.60 0.99 34%
    Columbus, OH 5,459 5,904 445 8% 1.52 $35.68 2,179 4,047 1,868 86% $26.43 1.11 41%
    Columbia, SC 1,764 2,251 487 28% 1.52 $29.89 565 1,223 658 116% $25.74 0.79 35%
    Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT 2,792 2,523 -269 -10% 1.47 $43.97 2,541 4,188 1,647 65% $37.38 1.5 62%
    San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 5,957 5,619 -338 -6% 1.45 $49.58 5,313 8,241 2,928 55% $36.07 2.18 59%
    Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI 24,843 25,364 521 2% 1.43 $40.02 11,001 18,566 7,565 69% $30.13 1.04 42%
    Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT 3,883 3,554 -329 -8% 1.42 $35.62 1,675 2,754 1,079 64% $23.68 1.13 44%
    Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA 4,219 5,096 877 21% 1.4 $34.80 3,090 4,806 1,716 56% $24.93 1.16 49%
    Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL 932 1,054 122 13% 1.3 $38.08 571 1,024 453 79% $21.81 1.08 49%
    Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 5,340 6,075 735 14% 1.29 $31.06 2,496 4,946 2,450 98% $23.22 0.96 45%
    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 8,023 9,266 1,243 15% 1.25 $41.54 5,669 10,546 4,877 86% $31.69 1.6 53%
    Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 8,461 9,228 767 9% 1.25 $38.97 4,905 8,771 3,866 79% $27.07 1.33 49%
    San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA 5,932 7,085 1,153 19% 1.21 $35.99 6,157 9,098 2,941 48% $28.58 1.4 56%
    North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, FL 979 1,201 222 23% 1.18 $28.50 1,018 2,152 1,134 111% $29.83 1.11 64%
    Indianapolis-Carmel, IN 3,680 4,292 612 17% 1.17 $31.81 1,927 3,726 1,799 93% $31.06 1.16 46%
    Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 12,418 12,873 455 4% 1.16 $42.35 7,766 14,334 6,568 85% $33.44 1.4 53%
    New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA 38,299 40,317 2,018 5% 1.16 $44.99 23,811 42,734 18,923 79% $30.64 1.06 51%
    Jacksonville, FL 2,329 2,889 560 24% 1.16 $33.43 1,310 2,624 1,314 100% $23.78 0.92 48%
    Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY 1,905 2,040 135 7% 1.15 $33.13 1,309 2,049 740 57% $24.65 1.32 50%
    Kansas City, MO-KS 4,248 4,656 408 10% 1.14 $34.10 2,350 3,949 1,599 68% $30.75 1.01 46%
    Dayton, OH 1,814 1,771 -43 -2% 1.14 $35.69 961 1,286 325 34% $25.49 0.99 42%
    Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ 7,608 8,340 732 10% 1.13 $32.40 4,639 9,169 4,530 98% $33.22 1.14 52%
    Albuquerque, NM 1,616 1,689 73 5% 1.11 $32.90 1,194 1,863 669 56% $22.58 1.22 52%
    Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN 2,798 3,465 667 24% 1.09 $35.65 1,974 3,693 1,719 87% $30.35 0.98 52%
    Charleston-North Charleston-Summerville, SC 835 1,372 537 64% 1.09 $33.58 553 1,384 831 150% $35.79 0.84 50%
    Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL 8,493 9,935 1,442 17% 1.08 $32.23 5,861 11,662 5,801 99% $25.00 0.78 54%
    Worcester, MA 1,460 1,449 -11 -1% 1.07 $38.83 1,226 1,823 597 49% $25.44 1.32 56%
    Ogden-Clearfield, UT 693 889 196 28% 1.06 $35.29 516 1,053 537 104% $21.40 0.92 54%
    Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO 5,020 5,475 455 9% 1.05 $35.87 4,363 8,222 3,859 88% $31.82 1.28 60%
    Salt Lake City, UT 2,228 2,820 592 27% 1.04 $29.72 1,487 2,495 1,008 68% $28.77 0.98 47%
    Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA 1,174 1,311 137 12% 1.02 $35.60 1,381 1,783 402 29% $28.25 1.1 58%
    Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL 3,268 4,289 1,021 31% 1.02 $32.16 1,652 3,374 1,722 104% $21.70 0.84 44%
    Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA 21,063 22,906 1,843 9% 1.01 $40.18 20,890 27,397 6,507 31% $28.44 0.95 54%
    Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI 3,035 3,228 193 6% 0.97 $34.75 1,363 2,343 980 72% $24.85 1.05 42%
    Colorado Springs, CO 1,116 1,144 28 3% 0.95 $39.33 895 1,456 561 63% $24.09 1.11 56%
    Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA 2,463 2,628 165 7% 0.95 $36.02 1,986 2,511 525 26% $23.94 0.97 49%
    Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN 3,590 3,925 335 9% 0.94 $37.23 2,287 4,179 1,892 83% $29.33 1.13 52%
    Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 9,432 11,664 2,232 24% 0.93 $39.31 7,543 16,252 8,709 115% $32.06 1.03 58%
    Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH 3,823 3,779 -44 -1% 0.92 $34.77 2,527 4,022 1,495 59% $27.45 1.07 52%
    Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA 1,548 1,782 234 15% 0.91 $35.49 809 1,336 527 65% $21.03 0.87 43%
    Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX 2,318 3,106 788 34% 0.9 $38.24 2,768 6,827 4,059 147% $30.82 1.52 69%
    Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC 2,525 3,126 601 24% 0.89 $37.00 1,535 3,500 1,965 128% $26.99 1 53%
    Boise City-Nampa, ID 860 973 113 13% 0.88 $25.77 701 1,371 670 96% $26.39 0.97 58%
    Springfield, MA 1,100 1,068 -32 -3% 0.87 $38.83 905 1,341 436 48% $21.14 1.14 56%
    Syracuse, NY 1,033 1,094 61 6% 0.86 $33.49 750 1,084 334 45% $23.92 1.07 50%
    Greensboro-High Point, NC 1,074 1,239 165 15% 0.86 $33.31 583 1,120 537 92% $21.04 0.93 47%
    Oklahoma City, OK 1,832 2,113 281 15% 0.85 $32.65 1,261 2,116 855 68% $21.18 0.76 50%
    New Haven-Milford, CT 1,388 1,259 -129 -9% 0.84 $35.65 1,203 2,018 815 68% $24.78 1.19 62%
    Augusta-Richmond County, GA-SC 642 738 96 15% 0.81 $31.58 326 793 467 143% $25.98 0.7 52%
    Greenville-Mauldin-Easley, SC 941 955 14 1% 0.79 $30.95 475 964 489 103% $29.36 0.79 50%
    Rochester, NY 1,536 1,612 76 5% 0.78 $42.31 1,509 2,093 584 39% $24.08 1.18 56%
    Honolulu, HI 1,414 1,638 224 16% 0.78 $38.00 1,119 1,713 594 53% $23.04 1.03 51%
    Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL 418 650 232 56% 0.78 $29.02 623 1,192 569 91% $34.26 0.9 65%
    Chattanooga, TN-GA 746 758 12 2% 0.78 $30.21 452 769 317 70% $32.13 0.8 50%
    San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX 2,182 2,798 616 28% 0.74 $36.56 1,898 3,762 1,864 98% $25.26 0.84 57%
    Raleigh-Cary, NC 1,327 1,563 236 18% 0.72 $35.67 1,181 3,057 1,876 159% $28.88 1.4 66%
    Pittsburgh, PA 3,462 3,407 -55 -2% 0.72 $39.85 3,022 4,724 1,702 56% $29.95 1.22 58%
    Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX 6,450 8,067 1,617 25% 0.72 $45.88 7,166 14,480 7,314 102% $34.85 1.06 64%
    Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA 2,571 3,029 458 18% 0.71 $35.49 3,198 5,632 2,434 76% $29.72 1.22 65%
    Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 2,264 3,586 1,322 58% 0.71 $33.82 3,241 4,991 1,750 54% $21.48 0.73 58%
    Knoxville, TN 914 964 50 5% 0.7 $36.29 986 1,579 593 60% $30.40 1.06 62%
    Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR 869 980 111 13% 0.69 $25.44 614 1,056 442 72% $25.47 0.9 52%
    Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN 1,472 1,758 286 19% 0.69 $32.21 1,090 1,905 815 75% $29.22 0.87 52%
    Provo-Orem, UT 403 543 140 35% 0.67 $27.33 569 1,394 825 145% $25.34 1.14 72%
    Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI 6,388 4,878 -1,510 -24% 0.67 $38.72 3,847 7,756 3,909 102% $25.81 0.99 61%
    Tucson, AZ 901 997 96 11% 0.66 $26.22 1,322 2,098 776 59% $23.63 1.22 68%
    Akron, OH 752 872 120 16% 0.65 $32.30 790 1,243 453 57% $28.09 1.07 59%
    St. Louis, MO-IL 3,908 3,529 -379 -10% 0.65 $36.83 2,717 4,619 1,902 70% $29.33 0.95 57%
    Tulsa, OK 1,141 1,096 -45 -4% 0.63 $32.87 1,045 1,634 589 56% $21.73 0.78 60%
    Bakersfield-Delano, CA 592 760 168 28% 0.63 $41.27 539 809 270 50% $26.87 0.68 52%
    Memphis, TN-MS-AR 1,499 1,505 6 0% 0.61 $36.09 1,115 1,860 745 67% $28.32 0.68 55%
    Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ 759 828 69 9% 0.59 $37.07 795 1,219 424 53% $27.54 0.98 60%
    Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY 1,175 1,266 91 8% 0.57 $35.82 1,106 1,634 528 48% $21.49 1.04 56%
    Las Vegas-Paradise, NV 1,580 1,954 374 24% 0.57 $34.80 1,832 3,555 1,723 94% $30.50 0.96 65%
    Wichita, KS 769 688 -81 -11% 0.57 $36.40 583 785 202 35% $25.83 0.67 53%
    Birmingham-Hoover, AL 1,123 1,083 -40 -4% 0.54 $39.70 904 1,893 989 109% $29.65 0.81 64%
    New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA 1,347 1,176 -171 -13% 0.53 $34.93 1,322 2,094 772 58% $34.33 0.74 64%
    Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown, NY 559 522 -37 -7% 0.5 $34.21 669 1,182 513 77% $26.26 1.04 69%
    Jackson, MS 468 499 31 7% 0.49 $25.35 507 1,011 504 99% $25.58 0.82 67%
    Baton Rouge, LA 686 760 74 11% 0.49 $31.81 705 1,518 813 115% $25.83 0.81 67%
    Stockton, CA 432 437 5 1% 0.49 $33.90 419 606 187 45% $23.69 0.65 58%
    Modesto, CA 330 336 6 2% 0.49 $35.82 279 394 115 41% $21.03 0.58 54%
    Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI 745 740 -5 -1% 0.48 $31.45 620 1,239 619 100% $21.66 0.88 63%
    Toledo, OH 649 580 -69 -11% 0.47 $38.54 622 935 313 50% $25.12 0.9 62%
    Lakeland-Winter Haven, FL 347 367 20 6% 0.45 $30.15 303 534 231 76% $21.03 0.61 59%
    Fresno, CA 515 590 75 15% 0.41 $33.26 610 851 241 40% $23.13 0.61 59%
    Scranton–Wilkes-Barre, PA 424 419 -5 -1% 0.4 $34.74 362 588 226 62% $23.07 0.73 58%
    Lancaster, PA 330 355 25 8% 0.37 $39.37 484 765 281 58% $27.27 0.76 68%
    El Paso, TX 355 411 56 16% 0.32 $31.72 374 775 401 107% $21.03 0.6 65%
    Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA 246 186 -60 -24% 0.2 $28.78 382 571 189 49% $24.92 0.67 75%
    McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX 158 195 37 23% 0.2 $35.50 222 555 333 150% $21.03 0.43 74%

    Data and analysis for this infographic came from Analyst, EMSI’s web-based labor market tool. Follow us on Twitter @desktopecon. Email Josh Wright if you have any questions or comments, or would like to see further data.

    Young woman in a field photo by BigStock.

  • Entrepreneurial Software Developers and the App Economy

    The New York Times continued its excellent iEconomy series with an article on the job prospects for app developers. The lengthy piece gives a few snippets of labor market data for software developers and touches on the work of economist Michael Mandel in measuring the “App Economy.”

    The gist of the NYT piece, and something that Mandel doesn’t go along with, is that the majority of entrepreneurs in the app writing realm have a difficult time making a living — despite all the buzz that surrounds the growing field.

    Mandel’s recent paper (PDF) on the subject “makes it clear that large companies are hiring droves of app developers in-house to create and maintain apps,” he writes on his blog. (Note: Mandel’s paper was written for a software development industry association, and his previous App Economy paper was written for advocacy group TechNet.)

    Using all this as a jumping-off point, we explored EMSI’s data on software developers — both those in traditional employment settings and those who are self-employed or write code on the side. Our analysis shows that while wages for independent app developers significantly lag those of salaried employees in the field, proprietors have grown at a faster pace than their salaried counterparts in app development over the last decade.

    Mandel relied on job posting data for his research. For this post, we used standard labor market data from EMSI — understanding its limitations in measuring relatively new occupations such as this one — and specifically focused on application software developers (SOC 15-1132). Not all these workers create mobile apps for the iPhone or Android mobile operating system, but this is the closest we can get to approximating the labor market characteristics of app developers with historic, detail-rich data.

    Background & Wage Comparison

    Mandel estimates there are 519,000 jobs in the App Economy, with only a portion of those being app developers. Meanwhile, as the Times writes, there are roughly one million software developer jobs in the U.S., and the growth has been robust outside hiccups during the 2001 and 2007-2009 recessions (see the image to the left). When we narrow our focus to application software developers, removing systems software developers from the picture, the national job total shrinks to fewer than 570,000. Self-employed app developers and those who work on the side on top of their primary job (what EMSI refers to as “extended proprietors”) account for another 40,000-plus estimated jobs, or 7% of the total app developer workforce as of 2012.

    We should note here that EMSI’s proprietor datasets offer a window into entrepreneurial activity for app developers and any other occupation, but we caution against labeling all workers in the self-employed or extended proprietor classes as entrepreneurs. More accurately, inside the extended proprietors dataset are those who pursue extra work opportunities while maintaining their day job, while the self-employed dataset includes those who have taken the additional step and are primarily on their own. Once start-up owners incorporate their business, they fall under the traditional wage-and-salary worker datasets.

    SOC Description Salaried Jobs (2012) Proprietor Jobs (2012) Proportion of Proprietors
    Source: QCEW Employees, Non-QCEW Employees, Self-Employed & Extended Proprietors – EMSI 2012.3 Class of Worker
    15-1132 Software Developers, Applications 568,953 42,819 7%
    15-1133 Software Developers, Systems Software 410,202 27,983 6%
    15-1131 Computer Programmers 330,067 82,802 20%
    15-1179 Information Security Analysts, Web Developers, and Computer Network Architects 285,478 115,136 29%
    Total 1,594,700 268,741 14%

    The U.S. has nearly twice as many proprietors classified as generic computer programmers (SOC 15-1131) as app developers — and nearly three times as many proprietors in SOC 15-1179: information security analysts, web developers, and computer network architects. Still, with proprietors and salaried employees taken together, there are more app developers than any programming-related occupation, and it’s the second-highest paying programming-related occupation behind systems software developers.

    What’s really eye-opening, however, is the difference in hourly earnings for salaried app developers and independent app developers. As shown in the chart below, the wages for proprietors are substantially lower than their traditional counterparts. The earnings disparity for app developers at the bottom 10% in wages — what can be considered entry level — isn’t huge, but it quickly escalates. At the median wage level, salaried app developers make 1.5 times more than proprietors ($43.18 vs. $28.22 per hour); that jumps to almost twice as much among the top 10% of earners ($63.45 vs. $32.13).

    This wage gap isn’t confined to app developers; across the board, self-employed workers and extended proprietors make far less (see “Characteristics of the Self-Employed” for more). But what stands out for application developers is how dramatically the gap widens for salaried workers from the bottom to top 10th percentile of workers, and how comparatively small that gap is for proprietors. The top earners among proprietors make just $8 more per hour more than the bottom 10th percentile; for salaried workers, the difference is $36 per hour (or an additional $75,000 per year).

    Job Growth and Proprietor Breakdown by State

    We’ve already mentioned that 7% of application software developers nationwide are either self-employed or write code as a side gig. That’s up from 6.8% in 2001. Not a huge bump. But this segment of the app developer workforce has grown 13% since 2001, compared to 9% growth for standard salaried workers. Since 2007, when the App Economy took off, each group of workers has grown 6%.

    The following table provides the salaried employee/proprietor breakdown by state. It also gives the median hourly earnings and top 10% earnings for both classes of workers.

    A few items of note:

    • Wyoming (22.7%) and Nevada (21%) have the largest share of proprietors in app development. Both have small app developer workforces, a common thread among the other top states in this category (Montana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Idaho). With fewer established software companies in these states, developers could be more likely to go at it on their own (though we should mention: many software developers can work from anywhere).
    • Washington (3.8%) and Virginia (3.9%) have the smallest proportion of proprietors. These two states have also seen the largest percentage increase in salaried app developers since 2001, at 35% and 38% respectively.
    • In addition to having the second-highest percentage of proprietors in app development, Nevada has seen the fastest proprietor growth since 2001 (52%). Among states with more than 1,000 self-employed and extended proprietors in this field, Georgia has increased the fastest (39%), followed by Florida (36%), Texas (32%), and Michigan (31%).
    • While Michigan’s proprietor growth has been strong, salaried app developers there have declined 11% since ’01. At least some of those laid-off developers could be fueling the proprietor growth by starting their own businesses.
    • For salaried app developers in the top percentile for wages, California ($71.00) and Maryland ($70.27) lead the U.S. with the most lucrative wages. It’s not a surprise to see either of these state at the top: California has the most developers in the nation, many of which are clustered around San Jose, the nation’s highest-paying metro area; part of Maryland feeds into the high-paying Washington, D.C., metro area.
    • For proprietors in the top percentile for wages, New Jersey ($41.02) is the highest-paying state. According to Mandel’s latest study, the App Economy has a more than $1 billion annual impact in New Jersey, based on wages generated in the sector. That’s the sixth-highest impact in the nation. New Jersey is also fifth among all states in its concentration of app developers, at 68% more per capita than the national average.
    APPLICATION SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS
    Source: QCEW Employees, Non-QCEW Employees, Self-Employed & Extended Proprietors – EMSI 2012.3 Class of Worker
    SALARIED EMPLOYEES PROPRIETORS
    State Name 2012 Jobs % Job Change (2001-12) Median Hourly Earnings Top 10% Hourly Earnings 2012 Jobs % Job Change (2001-12) Median Hourly Earnings Top 10% Hourly Earnings Proportion of Proprietors (vs. Total Workforce)
    Wyoming 214 -10% $29.52 $41.29 63 15% $25.89 $29.47 22.7%
    Nevada 1,520 8% $38.40 $55.09 404 52% $30.96 $35.26 21.0%
    Montana 555 3% $28.29 $50.62 145 37% $22.52 $25.64 20.7%
    Louisiana 1,373 -12% $34.58 $55.34 355 18% $29.00 $33.02 20.5%
    Mississippi 905 -8% $33.37 $52.31 177 30% $24.81 $28.25 16.4%
    Hawaii 749 6% $37.43 $60.07 145 -3% $27.79 $31.64 16.2%
    New Mexico 1,328 2% $37.31 $56.69 225 22% $22.82 $25.98 14.5%
    Idaho 1,390 -12% $30.83 $50.86 232 41% $27.57 $31.39 14.3%
    Tennessee 4,978 0% $36.77 $51.50 717 34% $25.68 $29.24 12.6%
    Rhode Island 979 4% $45.67 $63.27 136 12% $28.53 $32.49 12.2%
    Maine 1,355 -9% $35.04 $55.23 187 21% $22.32 $25.41 12.1%
    Oklahoma 2,531 -10% $31.26 $48.06 337 6% $23.18 $26.39 11.8%
    West Virginia 835 10% $38.51 $56.25 112 11% $20.80 $23.68 11.8%
    Arkansas 1,773 3% $34.81 $47.36 234 42% $24.04 $27.37 11.7%
    Alaska 697 24% $35.27 $53.22 86 18% $26.40 $30.06 11.0%
    Utah 4,801 18% $38.49 $55.51 587 40% $22.95 $26.13 10.9%
    Vermont 939 14% $34.87 $65.49 104 11% $23.88 $27.19 10.0%
    Kansas 2,901 -11% $39.30 $61.35 317 8% $27.35 $31.14 9.9%
    Florida 22,102 14% $36.68 $56.37 2,411 36% $25.29 $28.20 9.8%
    Georgia 12,450 2% $40.86 $56.96 1,347 39% $27.86 $31.72 9.8%
    Connecticut 6,441 -1% $43.78 $59.87 691 14% $33.66 $38.33 9.7%
    Oregon 7,632 4% $41.57 $61.26 786 28% $21.86 $24.89 9.3%
    South Dakota 809 -14% $33.84 $52.85 83 20% $21.83 $24.85 9.3%
    Arizona 8,822 13% $42.05 $62.32 885 25% $26.79 $30.50 9.1%
    South Carolina 3,853 15% $35.42 $52.29 384 42% $24.66 $28.08 9.1%
    Michigan 12,865 -11% $36.02 $54.46 1,228 31% $27.02 $30.77 8.7%
    Indiana 6,189 12% $34.08 $51.57 585 9% $25.33 $28.84 8.6%
    Pennsylvania 16,123 6% $40.93 $58.46 1,460 8% $27.36 $31.15 8.3%
    Texas 40,230 15% $43.17 $64.35 3,590 32% $30.82 $35.09 8.2%
    Alabama 4,295 8% $40.13 $58.05 381 30% $23.81 $27.12 8.1%
    Maryland 13,183 25% $43.61 $70.27 1,086 16% $29.93 $34.08 7.6%
    Illinois 19,390 -1% $42.78 $67.65 1,581 2% $27.55 $31.37 7.5%
    Kentucky 4,100 16% $33.66 $49.69 328 21% $25.85 $29.43 7.4%
    California 91,783 5% $49.69 $71.00 6,813 -5% $30.66 $34.91 6.9%
    New York 33,554 2% $44.44 $70.12 2,325 -11% $29.27 $33.33 6.5%
    Wisconsin 9,682 16% $36.75 $52.95 658 36% $22.10 $25.16 6.4%
    North Dakota 970 20% $30.38 $41.90 64 28% $20.22 $23.03 6.2%
    North Carolina 16,122 13% $41.49 $58.84 1,044 24% $24.85 $28.30 6.1%
    Delaware 2,072 0% $43.28 $64.27 130 43% $33.01 $37.59 5.9%
    Iowa 4,574 15% $34.54 $49.23 280 8% $25.58 $29.12 5.8%
    New Hampshire 4,412 -3% $44.45 $65.62 274 -8% $28.08 $31.97 5.8%
    New Jersey 27,617 5% $44.89 $68.60 1,631 15% $34.38 $39.14 5.6%
    Colorado 19,887 -3% $42.75 $62.44 1,156 16% $28.58 $32.54 5.5%
    Ohio 23,378 19% $38.56 $54.45 1,305 8% $27.77 $31.62 5.3%
    Massachusetts 25,567 0% $46.04 $67.52 1,385 1% $27.23 $31.01 5.1%
    Minnesota 14,893 4% $42.59 $58.43 776 13% $26.56 $30.24 5.0%
    District of Columbia 2,720 33% $45.28 $67.89 138 10% $36.03 $41.02 4.8%
    Missouri 12,671 11% $39.57 $56.53 603 11% $25.18 $28.67 4.5%
    Nebraska 4,128 10% $34.43 $51.57 193 21% $27.55 $31.37 4.5%
    Virginia 33,599 38% $47.87 $69.49 1,350 20% $31.72 $36.12 3.9%
    Washington 33,016 35% $46.34 $65.56 1,305 23% $27.26 $31.04 3.8%
    Total 568,953 9% $43.18 $63.45 42,819 13% $28.22 $32.13 7.0%

    Further Reading

    Measuring the Impact of Apple and the App Economy

    An IT Worker Shortage? It Depends on the State

    INDUSTRY REPORT: Internet Publishing, Broadcasting, and Search Engines

    The Emerging Professional, Scientific, and Technical Sector

    Data and analysis for this infographic came from Analyst, EMSI’s web-based labor market tool. Follow us on Twitter @desktopecon. Email Josh Wright if you have any questions or comments, or would like to see further data.

    Illustration by Gabe Stevenson