Introducing the QCEW State & County Map Application
Introducing the QCEW State & County Map Application
We have developed an interactive state and county map application available at http://beta.bls.gov/maps/cew/us. The application displays geographic economic data through maps, charts, and tables, allowing users to explore employment and wage data of private industry at the National, State, and county level.
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While of course you are correct that precision to more than one decimal place would not be analytically meaningful, this issue does mean that in the (common) event of multi-way ties a state can be shown rather higher or lower in the rankings than it is – and consistently so at that – simply on account of its name rather than the data.
In the latest quarterly data for annual total job growth I count 39 of the 50 states are involved in 13 different ties, the biggest being the 8-way tie for 1.1% growth and 26th place. The potential is clearly there for giving the impression that an actually 26th-ranked state is in 33rd simply because of its name, and that is, I daresay, a significant error especially since it can be repeated over time.
You are correct about the rules for ranking. We don’t round beyond one decimal place because doing so would imply a level of precision that is not analytically meaningful.
You seem to have a minor bug when it comes to ranking states by e.g. employment percentage change: the rule seems to be to order by the rounded-to-nearest-0.1% value, then alphabetically (the latter always ascending).
So for instance with today’s 2012Q3 data, Ohio is shown as being in 23rd in the private sector when sorting by employment percentage growth descending, 26th if you sort by employment percentage growth ascending. It’s actually 26th when I dig into the underlying data.
Could the sorting be done by the precise percentage change regardless of how many digits are displayed?
The Beta Data Finder tool enables users to save results in a .xls or .csv file. To obtain unemployment rates, or changes in unemployment rates, for states, start by selecting “Area” under the Topics category on the left side of the screen, and then choose “Unemployment” under Measures.
Need Unemployment Rate “Over-the-Year Change in Unemployment Rates for States”
exel file
As an advisor to students seeking employment in the health field, I hope to see future iterations where employment projection data from more specific parameters can be viewed. So far, pretty awesome. It’s a very attractive display of data!
You’ve broken the mold, data presented in an intuitive and interesting way! Bravo! Keep this up and EMSI will have some competition. I would like to see a way to expand the timeframe, great snapshot though.
wow interesting
awesome
There is not currently a way to view all U.S. counties at once through this tool, but that is a feature we will consider adding. Thanks for the suggestion.
It is possible to view data for all U.S. counties through a series of Excel files available in FTP directories on the BLS website. Each Excel file provides data for a single quarter for every county in the United States. The most recent data currently available in this format, for the first quarter of 2012, can be found at ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cew/2012/county_high_level/. Files in this format are available back to 1990. For the entire series of files, go to ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cew/. Each year is available in a separate folder. For each year, choose the “high level county” folder to obtain the Excel files for each quarter of the year.
good
Great tool! Is there a way to view all the counties in the US without clicking each state individually?
This is the direction we need to take US data. This is a HUGE step in the right direction. Great thought was put into this…it needs a little tweaking but I expect data to be mapped this beautiful in all corners of our government.
This webpage doesn’t appear to load correctly while using a google chrome browser, which, according to statcounter.com’s September 2012 global stats, is the most popular browser in the world (34% to 32.7% for ie).
Fantastic–build on this and it will be a tremendously useful tool.
The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) obtains industry data at a very detailed level, but no occupational data are collected in the QCEW. The QCEW is a census that provides the sampling frame, stratified by industry and geography, for the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey and National Compensation Survey (NCS). The occupational data are collected in those surveys, not in the QCEW.
Map was interesting but needs to provide occupational data at a lower level consistent with other surveys that BLS completes, e.d. NCS. For example, it would be useful to see data for computer and mathematical occupations so that it can be compared to NCS/OES data. This would enhance research. The tool is a great application of geospational technology.
I am a high school teacher and showed this map to my students. I can’t tell you how excited they were to see something cool like this. Good job. Physician Assistant Schools
Really creative and useful.
It would be nice if the industries tab was as specific as the OES is when creating tables. Otherwise, this is pretty nice.
Very Useful
Very Usefull
i think its cool
i would just like to say that this is a very good website thanks for sharing.
Typically, I despise federal websites as they are hard-to-use and ineffective. This is a wonderful tool, easy-to-use, and effective for the information extraction it was intended for.
My hats off to you.
This is a great way of illustrating the QCEW data. We would love to see how we can further develop it for our state (Louisiana) with other datasets that we recieve.
Handy.
Would be nice if we could get to subsectors – i.e. split out health services from education
this is the best website ever ( not really)
The QCEW State and County Map is excellent! I am an educator and a doctoral student. I am constantly looking at census data to examine trends and to evaluate their impact on education. I first found this excellent tool after reading an article in The Population Bulletin. It took a while for me to actually find this map and then the next day I also had trouble finding it. Now I have it bookmarked. I did notice today some of the columns are distorted for some reason but I imagine that is a temporary problem. I like being able to query the data in different ways and being able to export to Excel. This is a wonderful tool. Thank you for providing this.
You folks have done a terrific job by creating such a great a graphic and data set. I teach classes for the state of Michigan, host a web page and volunteer in the local school system. Information of this type, provided by an impartial third party is so valuable. A good deal of my time is spent convincing students that Americans are still the most productive of the world’s employees and they are doing things as good or better than other parts of the world. Data like that you’ve generated provides a solid footing from which we can move to a “can do” attitude instead fretting about a changing world. I doubt that you ever thought of yourself as performing a patriotic act when you put this data together. However, I assure you, your data can be put to use to guide government leaders and students who are faced with real life obstacles. It is a component I think our students of economic development should have in their toolbox.
Thank you for helping me help these local government administrators find information of use to them and their citizens..
Best regards,
Joe Turner, Instructor
Michigan Assessors Association
good