EMSI's reputation is built on the quality of our data.
EMSI's philosophy of combining data from different sources gives us the best possible picture of what's going on on the ground. — Patrick Holwell, Arapahoe/Douglas Works!
EMSI provides the most in-depth and current local employment data available. We update it four times per year and make it available for any county or individual ZIP code in the U.S.
Our data is used by many to research and understand regional employment trends and dynamics. It’s composed of comprehensive information on industries, occupations, demographics — as well as things like occupational skills, education, training, and even the names and size of companies in your region broken down by industry.
To do this we link nearly 90 data sources — from federal sources like the Bureau of Labor Statistics to state and private sources.
If you’ve ever worked with this sort of information, you know it can be hard to collect and present. It’s also often incomplete and outdated. So we organize the data, bring it up to date, and build software and reports around it so you can put it to use more quickly and effectively.
EMSI Data is delivered through ...
Analyst, a powerful tool for exploring employment data.
Career Coach, a tool that helps jobseekers understand local employment opportunities.-
Our Consulting Department, which delivers reports that help regional planners and decision-makers understand and analyze a range of workforce, education, and economic development issues.
Why EMSI Data?
Typical labor market data ignores much of the economy. On average, about 35% of all county level data is suppressed to hide firm-specific numbers. These datasets also generally exclude proprietors, understating the total number of workers by an average of 17%. In contrast, EMSI Data removes suppressions and includes proprietors, creating a more complete picture of the regional workforce.
Our Proprietary Industry Data
While most state-level data sources only capture covered industry employment (often referred to as “payroll” employees), EMSI also combines additional state and federal sources to provide a complete employment picture that includes the self-employed (proprietors and partnerships), agricultural workers, and others not captured by basic “payroll” data. This is known as EMSI’s “Complete Employment” dataset.
I prefer EMSI to federal datasets because it’s a more robust dataset in terms of employers who don’t file unemployment insurance. Self-employer data is important to us, particularly because we are an entrepreneurial state. — Deidre Myers, Oklahoma Department of Commerce
EMSI also publishes a modified and enhanced version of covered-only industry employment data known as “EMSI Covered Employment,” which is based upon and (with some minor exceptions) comparable to the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
When EMSI refers to “covered” data, we mean jobs covered by state/federal unemployment insurance (often called the “UI universe” by labor market analysts), as well as railroad jobs covered by a separate unemployment program administered by the Railroad Retirement Board.
When EMSI refers to “noncovered” data, we mean all other paid jobs (notably self-employment and a small fraction of payroll jobs) that are not in the UI universe or railroad. Volunteers and unpaid family workers are not included in any EMSI dataset.
