US Census Statistics for Job-searching

Using Census Department Statistics To Help in Job-searching

The US Census Department (online at www.census.gov) publishes Local Employment Dynamics statistics that might help in your job search. One set of data is called QWI Online and it’s full name is Quarterly Workforce Indicators. The other set of data is called Industry Focus. Used together the data can answer such questions as:

What is the employment in a specific industry in your county
How many new jobs are being created in that industry.

Here is an example.

Say I want to find the industries in Monmouth County that have the greatest number of new employees over the previous year (the most recent data is 1 year old). You go to Industry Focus select “new hires” as the primary search criteria and Monmouth County, NJ as the geographical entity. (you can add other secondary search criteria). The resulting list shows the “722 Food Services and Drinking Places” as having the most “new hires”. You can then use the QWI Online to find out more detail about the kinds of Food Services and Drinking places (taking it down to 4 digit NAICS detail) for the subgroups of Full-Service Restaurants, Limited-Service, Special Foods, and Drinking Places. The data in this example are as follows;
722 Food Services and Drinking Places 5,775 new hires from 2006 to 2007
7221 Full-Service Restaurants had 2,891 new hires
7222 Limited-Service Restaurants had 2,189 new hires
7223 Special Food Services had 442 new hires
7224 Drinking Places had 253 new hires
A possible conclusion is that if you want to work in a restaurant, apply at full-service restaurants. Additional data is average pay of new hires; total employment in the industry sector.

What the data do not show are the occupations employed in these industries. For that you have to use the Industy-Occupation Employment Matrix from the bureau of labor statistics. The matrix shows the distribution of occupations in an industry and the the distribution of individual occupations across the all industries. The matrix can answer such questions as

What industries employ the most social workers
In the education industry, what is the range of occupations employed?