Working with EMSI and a group of business and economic development experts, the Statesman analyzed data on dozens of detailed tech industries from 2001-2012 and grouped them into five major clusters — semiconductors, computers and electronics, software, web and mobile, and life sciences.

For each sector, EMSI provided historic and current job estimates, as well as supply chain data (i.e., how much each sector purchases from other industries, and estimates of how much that spending is done inside and outside the region).

Austin’s strongest tech industries are in its fast-growing “soft-tech” sector (software and web-focused industries). Employment in the “hard-tech” sector (PC and semiconductor manufacturing) has declined 41% since 2001 after companies moved hardware production and the like overseas or just downsized, period.

Here’s how Zehr described the overall trends:

Yet the more broadly one looks at the arc of Austin’s high-tech history, the more the dot-com frenzy looks like an aberration — and the better the industrial mix looks today. Buoyed by Samsung and the massive presence of even a struggling Dell Inc., the region continues to get significant economic production, if fewer jobs, from its “hard tech” industries, such as computer and semiconductor manufacturing.

Meanwhile, the area’s “soft tech” industries — from software to gaming to Internet technology firms — are mushrooming, making for an increasingly diverse industrial mix. A thriving Web-services industry has emerged through companies such as HomeAway and Bazaarvoice, with plenty more percolating in local startup incubators.

In a separate report released earlier in May, Brian Kelsey of Civic Analytics, working for the Austin Technology Council, used EMSI data to show that the tech sector directly accounts for 9% of all jobs in Austin. And when you factor in spin-off jobs in other industries, one-third of all jobs are tech-related. Further, Kelsey showed that the tech sector comprises 21% of Central Texas’ gross regional product.

President Obama, during a visit to Austin, pointed to ATC’s study when he said, “According to one report, the tech sector now drives more than one-quarter of Austin’s economy. And all of this has helped to make Austin one of the fastest-growing cities in America.”

Kelsey’s report and the Statesman article are great examples of how EMSI data, with its depth and flexibility, can be applied to get a better handle on a region’s tech workforce, like Austin’s, or examine supply chains, job multipliers, and myriad other key economic and workforce indicators.

For more measuring high-tech employment growth in your region, email Josh Wright. Read about EMSI data here. Follow EMSI on Twitter at @DesktopEcon or on Facebook here.

We’ve been working to help with this problem for years now, approaching it from the perspective of workers who need to know what skills to acquire, and of colleges that need to know what skills to teach. But now, in collaboration with CareerBuilder and Kelly Services, we’ve also developed a tool we call Talent Market Analyst, designed to help employers approach this issue from their perspective. We’re especially excited about what we call the “recruiting environment” section, the latest addition to the stable of tools we’ve built into Analyst. It’s a perfect way to visualize the factors that make it easy or difficult to find talented people to hire.

The Recruiting Environment In Action: Houston, Texas

Among other things, Houston has an especially strong tech sector; over the last few years, its computer programming and systems design industries have been an important part of a fast-growing economy. But that means that finding (for example) software developers for applications can be challenging.

This comes out clearly if we look at software developers in Houston using Talent Market Analyst, or TMA. In fact, the special recruiting environment section reports that the Houston MSA is a very negative recruiting environment. Among other factors, there are very few qualified workers available, and those that are available expect high, competitive wages — a median salary of about $4,000 more than the national average. TMA shows the situation in the 9-box, which looks like this:

Considering all these factors makes it clear that Houston is hard place to find good software developers. So what is the Houston tech sector to do? Talent Market Analyst has an answer for that too. While Houston is clearly a negative recruiting environment, TMA makes it easy to search the nation for MSAs with better talent pipelines for any occupation. For these software developers, for example, we can find out quickly that Dallas — the nearest major MSA, and likely the second choice for Houston recruiters — is a bad option too. In fact, Dallas is the nation’s most negative environment for software developers, with wage expectations almost as high as Houston’s and significantly more employers competing for talent.

Broader Search, Better Options

Software developers, however, are paid highly enough that many of them are willing to relocate to find better employment. And, using TMA, employers can find more distant areas to look at for talent. If they’re looking for software developers, Houston employers have many good choices.

For example, Des Moines has a significant number of software developers — over 2,100 in 2012 — but has substantially lower wage expectations. Des Moines software developers earn a median salary more than $10,000 lower than their equivalents in Houston. And in 2011, TMA reports that the Des Moines area produced 98 graduates from related educational programs. For new workers, those higher wages might be an especially strong incentive to pick up and move to Texas.

But if employers are willing to look even farther away, they might want to think about recruiting in Rochester, N.Y. Rochester has a healthy body of developers — 2,152 in 2012. On top of that, they have a low concentration of employers, and low salary expectations ($75,000, $15K less than Houston). And, Rochester produced a bumper crop of 588 graduates in related programs in 2011. Rochester is definitely a good place to look for software application developers.

TMA’s recruiting environment section gives a much larger set of options, though. Here are three other examples:

• Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C. (3,022 workers, median earnings of $86,954, 105 graduates)
• Cleveland, Ohio (3,829 workers, median earnings of $80,024, 181 graduates)
• Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, Va. (2,664 workers, median earnings of $70,573, 241 graduates)

Our Methodology

The recruiting environment section and its 9-box, which you can see on the left, works by combining various aspects of an occupation’s role in a regional economy into two different factors. We then use these two factors as axes on a graph. The two sets of data involved are the occupation’s relative wage in the region, and the supply and demand situation.

Relative Wage

The relative wage is built around two different statistics. First, it takes into account the absolute wage that regional workers in the occupation earn, including different percentiles. Second, it also uses EMSI’s proprietary methodology to consider the expected wage against a regional wage index. In other words, we determine whether that absolute wage is higher or lower than we would have expected for the region. Based on these, we graph the relative wage as favorable, neutral, or unfavorable on the horizontal axis of the 9-box.

Supply and Demand

The other factor, as shown on vertical axis represents supply and demand. The formula for this is somewhat more complex. It’s weighted by three different factors. First, it takes into account how concentrated (and therefore important) the occupation is in the region. Second, it then looks at how that regional concentration has changed over time — whether the occupation is becoming more or less important to the area. Third, it considers the actual change in an occupation’s regional workforce. Are there more or fewer jobs than there used to be?

Bringing Them Together

Together, these statistics provide a picture of how the region’s supply of and demand for workers play into its profile as a recruiting environment. This evaluation, too, is ranked as favorable, neutral, or unfavorable. The point in the 9-box where these two axes cross represents our evaluation of a region’s recruiting environment. There are nine different possibilities, from very favorable to very unfavorable.

Recruiting good talent for growing industries is hard. Finding the right people for positions can require broad, even nationwide searches. But with Talent Market Analyst, companies in negative recruiting environments can get several steps ahead of the competition by using EMSI’s labor market data to narrow their search. It’s easier to find the people you’re looking for if you know where to find them.

Data for this post was taken from Talent Market Analyst, EMSI’s exciting new tool for recruiters. To learn more about Talent Market Analyst, contact Robert Sentz. Follow us on Twitter @DesktopEcon.

While the usual suspects (manufacturing, mostly) are still struggling to add new jobs, Montreal’s economy is benefiting immensely from rapid growth in high-tech sectors. Fueled, in no small part, by the recent growth of local success story Blackberry, Inc., Montreal has spent the last four years adding jobs in a number of tech-related industries and occupations. But the way Montreal has done so points to the success not only of its local economy but also of its education system.

The metropolitan area of Montreal, as of 2012, had a population of about 3.8 million people, making it Canada’s second largest metro, and a workforce of 1.8 million jobs. Since 2009, the Montreal labour force has grown by an anemic 1.9%, significantly behind the nationwide rate of 4.2% and behind the province of Quebec’s average of 3.1%. Not an auspicious sign for the economy. But if we drill down and look at specific industries, we can find some remarkable growth occurring.

Let’s start by focussing in on one of Montreal’s largest and fastest-growing industries, computer systems design and related industries (NAICS 5415). In 2012, this industry was one of Montreal’s strongest, accounting for 33,404 jobs; in fact, from 2009 to 2013 it’s grown by 6.4%. It pays well, too. The median salary is over $71,000. And with an location quotient of 1.83, it’s something of a regional specialty. But people don’t work in industries, they work in occupations, so we need to consider how the different occupations that have staffed the growth of this industry are doing.

The answer? Incredibly well. In fact, if we sort out the eight occupations that have the most jobs in the computer systems design industry, we see that only one of them has lost jobs since 2009, and some of them have more than doubled in size. To see details for all of them, look to the table that accompanies this graph of their performance as a group. Note that this is for jobs in these occupations across all industries in Montreal, not just those in computer systems design.

With growth like this, it would make sense to see Montreal’s workforce growing at the expense of other, neighbouring metros that are simultaneously losing jobs in the same occupations. Montreal recruiters might be poaching talent from Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City, or any one of a number of other places. But that, surprisingly, is not the case. Of all the sizable metros with a sizable computer systems design industry near Montreal, very few are losing workers from occupations in our focus group. In fact, most of them are growing as well, as this chart shows:

The only major metro that might have been losing jobs to Montreal is Ottawa-Gatineau. But a decline of only 4,000 jobs, while significant for Ottawa, isn’t nearly enough to be a significant factor in Montreal’s addition of almost 20,000 jobs. In fact, if they’re going anywhere, it’s probably Toronto, where wages are much more attractive than Montreal’s (a median wage of $34 to Montreal’s $30).

If Montreal’s tech industries aren’t getting their workers from neighbouring regions, that leaves one option: education. It seems clear that Montreal’s higher education system is doing a good job of meeting this area of market demand by training workers for in-demand occupations. With a large number of universities, colleges, and other institutions in the Montreal area, it’s not surprising that Montreal’s tech industries are well-supplied with workers. Other cities looking to boost their economies should take note.

Data for this post came from Analyst, EMSI’s online labour market data tool. For more information on what Analyst can do for your college or business, contact Fraser Martens. Follow us on Twitter @desktopeconomist

So where’s the rapid job growth for telemarketers and other call center workers happening? You guessed it: mostly in other small states with low wages, like Montana and Idaho.

The call center industry has undergone major geographic shifts over the last decade. Florida has added more than 18,000 jobs and now has the second-largest call center workforce, behind Texas. Six other states, led by Ohio, have added at least 5,000 jobs. Montana has grown 200% and Idaho 153%, while three Midwestern states (Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska) have dropped between 3,300 and 6,000 jobs.

Here’s what caught our eye, though: The states that have seen the greatest percentage declines in the call center industry have the strongest economies in the U.S. North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Iowa have the lowest unemployment rates in the country, and each has much smaller call center sectors than they had 10 years ago. The only exception is Utah, which has ranks fifth in unemployment (4.9%) and has expanded its number of call center jobs by 14%.

The following map shows total call center job change from 2002-2012 in every state. The table below it gives a state-by-state call center industry breakdown, coupled with overall unemployment numbers for every state.

As NPR’s StateImpact Idaho illustrated last week with EMSI data, Idaho has four times the national average of call center jobs — the most per capita in the nation. It also has the largest share of minimum-wage workers in the United States. Those two facts aren’t necessarily related, but they do point to the proliferation of low-wage jobs in Idaho, a trend documented in great detail in StateImpact Idaho’s excellent Bottom Rung series.

Whenever Idaho or any other state adds a call center, it’s usually welcome news to local economic development officials, and for good reason. It’s not easy to attract jobs, even ones with relatively meager wages. Yet it seems obvious that the run-of-the-mill call center shouldn’t be the cornerstone for any economic development organization’s strategy. Consider EMSI’s jobs multiplier for telemarketing bureaus: In Texas, where average earnings ($43,000) are well above the national average, it’s 1.96, meaning every new call center job yields another .96 jobs. And in low-wage Idaho, the multiplier is a scant 1.53.

And to be clear, the earnings potential at call centers is limited. The industry accounts for an estimated 450,000 jobs in the United States, and those jobs pay on average just $37,519 per year. The two major occupations in call centers are customer services representatives (which accounts for 41% of the industry) and telemarketers (28%). Median earnings for customer service reps are $14.90 per hour, and the top 10% of CSRs make $23.85 — which equates to less than $50,000 per year for full-time workers.

Telemarketers make even less. Their median earnings are $11.10 per hour, and at the top level, they earn $18.98 ($39,478 per year for full-time workers).

We should note: Many of these workers are part-time students and others not looking for careers in the telemarketing field, and some use their telemarketing experience as a jumping-off point for sales or more lucrative customer service positions. Further, some call centers that pop up require technically minded workers, and thus pay more than the figures we’ve mentioned.

The EMSI data shown in this post comes from Analyst, our web-based labor market data and analysis tool. For more information on EMSI, contact Josh Wright (jwright@economicmodeling.com). Follow us on Twitter @DesktopEcon.

At least 3,000 coal miners in rural eastern Kentucky have lost their jobs since early 2012. This is the story of how the region has responded, and how the area’s workforce group used EMSI data to reel in a multimillion-dollar grant to help retrain the out-of-work miners and their spouses.

Background: Coal Key Part of Region

The Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc. (EKCEP) serves 23 counties in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. Since the early 1900s, coal mining has been a bedrock industry for the rural region, furnishing well-paid jobs in a historically poor area that’s home to just under 500,000 people.

In January 2012, coal mines in the region, hurt by falling gas prices and a warmer-than-average winter, started to lay off workers. The downsizing continued through the summer, when EKCEP – the region’s jobs program and workforce board – hosted a rapid response meeting to let laid-off miners know about the services available to them through community partners.

“From that [meeting] we gathered enough information to determine that the layoffs were rather substantial,” said Bridget Back, EKCEP’s Research and Program Effectiveness Manager.

“The majority of the workers in the industry had only ever worked in the coal industry. Several had quit school and not obtained a GED. And the majority of them had been out of school for a very long time. So what we were looking at was the need for retraining. A lot of the skills that they have are very specific and not necessarily easily transferable without some type of training.”

The clear gap in training, along with declining Workforce Investment Act (WIA) funding, prompted EKCEP to apply for a National Emergency Grant from the Department of Labor — a grant application built on a foundation of labor market data from EMSI.

Approach: Applying for the DOL Grant

The grant called for information about the communities that EKCEP serves and the workers it was hoping to train. As the chief grant writer, Back needed data on local miners’ average wages and data on the regional coal industry in general – how many jobs it accounted for, what percentage of the workforce had been affected by the layoffs, how the workers’ average earnings compared to the region as a whole.

Using Analyst, EMSI’s labor market data and analysis tool, she discovered the average annual wage in the region’s coal mining industry is $86,000 – far larger than the overall average wage of $38,291 per year. EMSI data also showed the region had 13,000 mining jobs before the latest wave of layoffs.

With all the different statistics that [EMSI] compiles, everything’s in one place. So it makes it a lot easier for someone like me when I need that information to go to one place and be able to run a report and download it in a matter of minutes as opposed to spending days combing through different data and material.” — Bridget Back, EKCEP

Over the preceding year or so, EKCEP had documented 3,000 coal-mining layoffs, which added up to more than 20% of the region’s mining workforce. Back used these and others numbers in the grant to show just how big an impact the layoffs have had on the area.

In addition to getting up-to-date, trustworthy labor market information from Analyst, Back used EMSI’s tool to export reports that served as backup documentation for the grant application. “The Analyst system was really good for that because the reports for the coal industry are really easy to run,” she said. “And they download well. I ran them and I downloaded them, saved them. And I attached them exactly like that to our application.”

Outcome: EKCEP Lands the Grant, Enrolls Over 900 Dislocated Miners

In March, the Department of Labor awarded EKCEP a National Emergency Grant of up to $5.2 million, with an initial funding of $3.8 million to train out-of-work miners and their spouses. The grant is the centerpiece of EKCEP’s Hiring Our Miners Everyday (or H.O.M.E.) program.

Over 900 dislocated workers have already enrolled for help through the program, and EKCEP has already committed over $1 million in funding for training services. Of the $1 million, almost $600,000 is in the form of on-the-job training partnerships with local small businesses. EKCEP will fund 50% to 75% of workers’ wages while they receive training from participating employers.

“The community is really starting to rally around this,” Back said. “It’s a two-year grant; we’re just a couple months into this, so I feel like the momentum is really starting to get behind this.”

Throughout the grant process, Back said EMSI’s Analyst proved to be an great tool. Among other things, it proved useful for finding the region’s emerging industries, which serve as potential targets for dislocated workers. Based on this information, H.OM.E. has helped train former miners for new careers as welders, electricians, industrial maintenance mechanics, lineworkers for the energy sector, and telecommunication workers.

“EMSI really helped a lot because without it, it would have taken a long time to actually dig through several different agencies to try to get the type of information we needed together,” Back said. “That’s what’s good about EMSI — with all the different statistics that you compile, everything’s in one place. So it makes it a lot easier for someone like me when I need that information to go to one place and be able to run a report and download it in a matter of minutes as opposed to spending days combing through different data and material.

“[Analyst] was really instrumental in helping me provide the information that we needed for our grant.”

For more on EKCEP and its H.O.M.E. initiative, visit its website. More on Analyst and EMSI data can be found here. For questions or further details, email Josh Wright.

About EMSI

Economic Modeling Specialists Intl. (EMSI) provides industry-leading employment data and economic analysis via web tools and custom reports. EMSI has produced more than 1,200 comprehensive impact analyses for colleges and universities in the US and internationally, and its web tools — Analyst and Career Coach — are used by thousands of professionals in higher education, workforce and economic development, and the private sector. For more information, visit economicmodeling.com.

With over 12.5 million people, New York City also makes up more than 64% of the state’s 19.5 million population, it has twice as many jobs (6 million vs. 3 million), and its workers make a lot more than their neighbors to the north (an average of $81.4K annually vs. $52.6K–though of course, the cost of living in NYC can can be as high as the skyscrapers).

In this post, we want to keep this disparity between New York City and the rest of the Empire State in mind as we analyze the top jobs. What are the fastest-growing occupations for either region? The highest-paying? The most unique to New York? Using Analyst (EMSI’s web-based labor market analysis tool), we’ll examine the growth patterns since 2010 in order to get an idea of the state’s (and city’s) top jobs for 2013.

Our observations are based solely on labor market data from EMSI’s 2013.1 release, which includes both wage-and-salary employees and self-employed. Bear in mind: because of the time lag in federal and state releases, our most recent annual average job numbers are still estimates. So we’ll be giving a simple projection here. This is what jobs in New York will look like if the weather holds.

Fastest-Growing Jobs

To determine the fastest-growing occupations, we’ll look at both how many new jobs have been added as well as each occupation’s proportional growth (filtering for those that contain at least 1000 jobs). The following tables list the occupations that have piled on the most new jobs since 2010 . Many of the same occupations are growing in NYC as across the rest of the state, but NYC is adding way more of them. The most impressive jobs for both are:

• Home health aides (+5,000 in NY, +15,000 in NYC)

• Combined food preparation & serving workers, including fast food (+4,000 in NY, +13,000 in NYC)

• Retail salespersons (+3,700 in NY, +13,000 in NYC)

• Registered nurses in NY (+3,400) and personal care aides in NYC (12,000)

The next tables list the occupations that grew by the greatest percent, which are, for the most part, very different in NYC than in NY. Here are the ones that overlap:

• Insurance sales agents (+15% in NY, +13% in NYC)

• Home health aides (+13% in NY, +16% in NYC, the second fastest growing occupation in both regions)

• Personal care aides (+11% in NY, +12% in NYC)

• Combined food preparation & serving workers, including fast food (+6% in upstate NY, +17% in NYC–the fastest-growing occupation in the city in terms of percent growth)

In NYC, half of the fastest-growing occupations are food prep/service-related (SOC 35-000 — ae New Yorkers helping us eat our way out of the recession?), while in the rest of the state, there’s no real pattern except perhaps with sales occupations (SOC 41-000).

Highest-Paying Jobs

It’s pretty predictable, turning to the jobs that make top dollar. There’s an unsurprisingly large number of healthcare jobs (SOC 29-000) and management positions (SOC 11-000) in both regions. (Judges, magistrate judges, and magistrates is the only exception in the state outside NYC.) And every occupation requires at least a bachelor’s degree, which is no shocker. To make more money, you first have to spend more money (and time).

What else we notice:

• Some of the highest-paying jobs in the rest of the state are in decline, but down in the Big Apple, everything’s growing except for dentists (-5%).

• Most of the jobs in NYC have pretty decent concentration (ranging from 0.87 LQ to 2.53 LQ), which is another way of saying these high-paying jobs are pretty unique and compelling for the city.

• Most of the jobs in region outside NYC have considerably lower concentration. The highest is judges, magistrate judges, and magistrates (3.61 LQ), but good specialization might not be that comforting in the face of -4% decline.

Most Concentrated Jobs

NY state and NYC show very different jobs when it comes to highest concentration or specialization (measured by location quotient, LQ). Many of the most concentrated jobs in upper NY are in dramatic decline, so we’ve filtered for the jobs that have grown at least a little since the recession. In NYC (where the occupation landscape is much more upbeat and interesting), we’ve filtered similarly for growing jobs, but we’ve added a filter for jobs that make $25/hour or higher (median hourly wage).

Cool things to note:

• Overall, the most concentrated jobs in the region north of NYC require lower education and lower pay (such as home health aides) and those in NYC require more training and yield higher wages (such as physicians & surgeons and advertising & promotions managers).

• Outside NYC, home health aides has grown the most. (Three of the region’s most concentrated jobs have to do with healthcare, but the other occupations are all over the map — no pun intended).

• Five of 13 occupations in NYC are entertainment-related (art, design, sports, media, SOC 27-000) with the most concentrated of all being sound engineering technicians (3.65 LQ, up from 3.56 in 2010). In fact, entertainment jobs make up the top three on the list.

• Three of 13 jobs in NYC pertain to business & financial operations (SOC 13-000).

Best Jobs Overall

It’s somewhat rare for solid growth, good pay, and high concentration to come together, but a few promising jobs have all three (or enough of two that it makes up for not having the third). These are the standouts for New York City and the rest of the state:

Outside New York City:

#1. Registered nurses: +3,366 jobs, +5%, 1.08 LQ, $29.52/hour. The fact that nurses will always be in demand is one of this occupation’s biggest lures. Another is its solid wages while requiring less than a regular four-year degree.

SOC 29-1111: Registered nurses assess patient health problems and needs, develop and implement nursing care plans, and maintain medical records. Administer nursing care to ill, injured, convalescent, or disabled patients. May advise patients on health maintenance and disease prevention or provide case management. Licensing or registration required.

#2. Insurance sales agents: +1,813 jobs, +15%, 0.89 LQ, $23/hour. The appeal is growth and moderate on-the-job training.

SOC 41-3021: Insurance sales agents sell life, property, casualty, health, automotive, or other types of insurance. May refer clients to independent brokers, work as an independent broker, or be employed by an insurance company.

#3. Physicians & surgeons, all other: +450, +4%, 1.42 LQ, $76.51/hour. The concentration is the most exciting; we could have predicted the wages.

SOC 29-1069: All physicians and surgeons not listed separately.

New York City:

#1. Computer & information systems managers: +1,150, +6%, 1.4 LQ, $70.78/hour. This occupation easily takes the cake with its sturdy growth and concentration, and you just can’t beat those wages for a job that requires only a bachelor’s degree plus work experience.

SOC 11-3021: Computer & information systems managers plan, direct, or coordinate activities in such fields as electronic data processing, information systems, systems analysis, and computer programming.

#2. Advertising & promotions managers: +436, +10%, 3.37 LQ, $61.19/hour. It’s the crazy concentration and appealing wages that call for our attention more than growth.

SOC 11-2011: Advertising & promotions managers plan, direct, or coordinate advertising policies and programs or produce collateral materials, such as posters, contests, coupons, or giveaways, to create extra interest in the purchase of a product or service for a department, an entire organization, or on an account basis.

#3. Financial analysts: +2,220, +8%, 2.79 LQ, $49.01/hour. Compare with #4. Personal financial advisors: +1,879, +9%, 2.61 LQ, $52.36/hour. Basically, you can make good money worrying over other people’s.

SOC 11-3031: Financial analysts plan, direct, or coordinate accounting, investing, banking, insurance, securities, and other financial activities of a branch, office, or department of an establishment.

SOC 13-2052: Personal financial advisors advise clients on financial plans using knowledge of tax and investment strategies, securities, insurance, pension plans, and real estate. Duties include assessing clients’ assets, liabilities, cash flow, insurance coverage, tax status, and financial objectives.

$5. Software developers, systems software: +1,554, +14%, 0.71 LQ, $47.16/hour. Robust growth, plus the wages aren’t too shabby.

SOC 15-1133: Software developers research, design, develop, and test operating systems-level software, compilers, and network distribution software for medical, industrial, military, communications, aerospace, business, scientific, and general computing applications. Set operational specifications and formulate and analyze software requirements. May design embedded systems software. Apply principles and techniques of computer science, engineering, and mathematical analysis.

#6. Market research analysts & marketing specialists: +3,487 jobs, +15%, 1.72 LQ, $35.21/hour. The strongest attractions here are growth and concentration.

SOC 13-1161: Market research analysts and marketing specialists research market conditions in local, regional, or national areas, or gather information to determine potential sales of a product or service, or create a marketing campaign. May gather information on competitors, prices, sales, and methods of marketing and distribution.

#7. Physicians & surgeons, all others: +803, +2%, 2.48 LQ, $75.31/hour. As in the rest of the state, physicians & surgeons in NYC have surprisingly high concentration.

#8. Registered nurses: +5,000 jobs, +5%, 0.96 LQ, $38.91/hour.

If you have any questions or comments, email Rob Sentz (rob@economicmodeling.com) or call us at 208-883-3500.

To give you a sense of just how badly manufacturing has done in Canada since 2002, this graph charts overall job growth in the sector nationwide. The drop-off is startling:

What industries are at fault for this? There are a few main culprits; these are the five fastest-declining manufacturing sectors in Canada:

• Cut and sew clothing manufacturing – 43,774 jobs lost, 72% of the industry
• Motor vehicle parts manufacturing – 32,460 jobs lost, 34%
• Household furniture and kitchen cabinet manufacturing – 24,158 jobs lost, 38%
• Plastic product manufacturing – 18,494 jobs lost, 19%
• Motor vehicle manufacturing – 14,845 jobs lost, 29%

Those five have lost a combined 130,000 jobs since 2002, more than half of all the Ontario manufacturing job losses. Unsurprisingly, Ontario’s economy has suffered the most of the provinces’ from manufacturing’s decline over the last decade, losing 27% of its manufacturing jobs. Of those 439,000 lost jobs across Canada, more than half — 245,000, in fact — were in Ontario. So, it’s not surprising to see some similarity between the subsectors of the manufacturing industry that fared the worst in Ontario and in Canada as a whole:

• Motor vehicle parts manufacturing – 29,325 jobs lost, 34%
• Plastic product manufacturing – 16,092, 28%
• Motor vehicle manufacturing – 11,828, 26%
• Cut and sew clothing manufacturing – 11,198, 73%
• Iron and steel mills and ferro-alloy manufacturing –  9,254, 42%

Four of the five on that list are the same industries as the national ranking, and the similarities are eerie. Cut and sew clothing – Canada’s most decimated manufacturing industry – lost almost exactly the same percentage of its jobs in Ontario as in the nation (72% vs. 73%). Motor vehicle related manufacturing and plastics were also severely hurt over the last decade. Ontario’s reputation as the engine of the Canadian economy appears to be well-earned. Unfortunately, that engine looks like it’s been driving in reverse.

The same 10-year trends are apparent in other provinces too, though. Quebec and British Columbia – the number two and three provinces for manufacturing – lost jobs at similar rates: 25% in Quebec and 16% in British Columbia. There, too, cut and sew clothing manufacturing was suffering (down 71% in Quebec and 68% in BC). Quebec and BC, however, didn’t lose jobs from vehicle manufacturing like Ontario did – their losses were in technology and wood product manufacturing, which isn’t surprising given the make-up of their economies.

This looks like a pretty comprehensive set of bad news across the board for Canada’s major manufacturing industries, like clothing, motor vehicles, and wood products. Where, then, is the good news? Well, for one thing, take a look at that same chart of nationwide manufacturing jobs from the top of the article. Yes, there’s a steep decline from 2002 to 2009. But since the worst of the recession, manufacturing as a whole has leveled out. In fact, it’s even begun to recover and add new jobs – especially in Alberta, as this graph shows:

 So where are the new jobs coming from?

The answer lies in specialization. We blogged recently about the growth of small manufacturers in the US economy. There isn’t the specific establishment data in Canada that there is in the US, but the kinds of manufacturing industries that have spurred that uptick we saw on the graph suggest a similar development in Canada. For example, consider the five manufacturing industries that have added the most jobs since 2009:

• Agricultural, construction, and mining machinery (+7,198, 27%)
• Machine shops, turned product, and screw, nut and bolt manufacturing (+4,303, 15%)
• Petroleum and coal product manufacturing (+3,692, 23%)
• Architectural and structural metals manufacturing (+3,585, 7%)
• Beverage manufacturing (3,444, 13%)

There are a couple of naratives to notice here. First off, of course, is the impetus that the oil boom has had on manufacturing, pushing mining machinery and petroleum production up by over 20%. But more interesting are the less-prestigious industries putting up great numbers; screw manufacturing, for example, or beverages. There are plenty of other examples of smaller manufacturing industries that are growing, too. Pesticide manufacturing is up 49% in the last two years, adding 2,341 jobs (mostly in Saskatchewan). Soap manufacturing has added over a thousand jobs.

The new jobs in manufacturing are there. They’re just not in the traditional industries. The Canadian motor vehicle industry may never rebound to where it was 10 years ago. But, nurtured properly, there may be other manufacturing industries that can take up the slack to revitalize Canada’s economy.

Data for this post came from the 2013.1 Beta dataset in Analyst for Canada, EMSI’s web-based labour market tool. Follow us on Twitter @desktopecon. Email Fraser Martens if you have any questions or comments, or would like to see further data.

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.

The labor market and hourly earnings data for this post comes from Analyst, EMSI’s labor market data and analysis tool. To see the highest-earning jobs that typically require an associate’s degree in your region, contact Josh Wright (jwright@economicmodeling.com). Follow us on Twitter @DesktopEcon.

Which cities are the best to target for recruiting actuaries and other hard-to-fill positions? What are the top universities graduating actuarial science majors? These are the types of questions EMSI can answer through Talent Market Analyst, a web-based tool designed to help companies easily navigate labor market data and apply it in their business development strategies.

The following CareerBuilder-produced video walks through how Analyst can help HR professionals map out their recruiting plans and effectively manage their worker pipeline.

We’ve written before how labor market data (i.e, detailed stats on the historic and projected performance of industries and occupations) can be useful for companies’ strategic workforce planning. This includes environment scanning, gap analyses, and workforce analytics — three of the key issues the Human Capital Institute has outlined (see here).

As Josh Bersin wrote in Forbes last month, HR managers need to think more like economists when seeking to solve workforce issues. Bersin referenced a Conference Board survey that showed CEOs, more than anything, are worried about human capital challenges in the coming year.

Economists understand that labor markets are local. So applying that principle, this organization could open a new R&D facilities in cities close to growing universities or an influx of highly educated people. Today many tech companies are moving their R&D teams to Toronto, for example, where the cost of living is lower than the US and education levels are high. This takes some workforce planning and economic analysis, not the typical work of most HR teams.

Going back to our earlier example of actuaries, Talent Market Analyst gives us some valuable insight to help insurance carriers and other industries that need these highly skilled workers. For instance:

• Just over 1,100 actuarial science degrees were issued in 2011, nearly three times as many as in 2003. The institutions that produced the most graduates: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (93), Cargenie Mellon University (77), Ohio State University (55), and George State University (54).

• Judging by the 1,100-plus graduates and EMSI’s jobs openings estimate of 1,854, there’s a fairly substantial undersupply of students becoming actuaries at the national level.

• Hartford, Conn., has the highest concentration of currently employed actuaries among any metro area in the United States, at nearly six times the national average. Portland, Maine, is second with more than four times the national average.

• Among all metro areas with at least 150 employed actuaries, Portland, Maine ($29.43) and Richmond, Va. ($34.30) have the lowest median hourly earnings, far below the national average of $43.96 per hour. So Portland has the second-highest concentration of actuaries of any U.S. city, very low wages, and a growing workforce (16% growth since 2002). This means the actuary profession, while small, is an important element to the Portland economy. But because of the wages, Portland could be a good target for recruiters looking to find actuaries.

Here’s more from Talent Market Analyst on actuaries at the national level. Note that the related graduates figure of 1,246 includes degrees in two other fields — mathematics/statistics and computational/applied mathematics.

For more information on Talent Market Analyst, EMSI’s web-based labor market data and analysis tool for HR professionals and workforce planners, contact Rob Sentz (rob@economicmodeling.com). Follow us on Twitter @DesktopEcon.

After one such news story, one of our clients was asked by a media outlet to comment on the surprising high-tech growth in their area. Immediately, the numbers in the Bay Area Council report didn’t look right, so our client asked us to look into the source data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As it turns out, the job growth for our client’s metro area and many others was drastically overstated, and the root of the problem was suppressed data.

Background on Suppressions

Those who work with raw government employment data probably have felt the same frustration: For industries with a small number of establishments or regions with small populations, the employment or wages are not disclosed for confidentiality reasons. Instead, the job total or earnings show up as zero or “ND.”

Suppressed data can be a big pain, and it’s why EMSI has developed sophisticated algorithms to unsuppress government data, including the BLS’s Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW).

EMSI’s algorithms use insights from multiple data sources and certain assumptions to replace suppressions with educated, bounded estimates. Many workforce development, economic development, and higher education practitioners who work at the local level have come to value and trust our unsuppressed estimates for specific industries and specific geographies (counties, MSAs, ZIP codes). Also among our diverse client base are state labor market offices, which can’t publish these figures but have regularly vouched for our estimates.

A Data Comparison

The Bay Area Council’s report showed the top metros for high-tech job growth from 2006-2011 and 2010-2011. For the more recent time frame, the council’s analysis ranked Greensboro-High Point, N.C., as the No. 1 metro for tech growth, at 36.3%. EMSI’s QCEW Employees dataset — which is an enhanced, unsuppressed version of the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages — shows Greensboro’s tech industries growing by 14.4% during that time, a difference of 22 percentage points from the council’s numbers.

All told, 1,751 net jobs in these five tech industries can be explained by suppressions — not new growth. That’s a quarter of the total Greensboro tech workforce.

Why are the growth percentages so different? It boils down to suppressions.

In its QCEW dataset, the BLS suppressed the employment number for five tech industries in Greensboro in either fourth quarter 2010 or fourth quarter 2011, meaning those industries were reported as having zero jobs in the given quarter. For some small industries, this didn’t make a huge difference. But for semiconductor manufacturing (NAICS 3344), the employment total went from zero in Q4 2010 to 1,804 in Q4 2011.

All told, 1,751 net jobs in these five tech industries can be explained by suppressions — not new growth. That’s a quarter of the total Greensboro tech workforce. In contrast, the same industries added 31 net jobs from 2010-2011, according to EMSI’s unsuppressed QCEW dataset, which reports job figures as annual averages.

From 2006-2011, the list of metros yields even more divergence between raw QCEW data compiled by Bay Area Council and EMSI’s unsuppressed QCEW dataset. Boise-Nampa, Idaho, with 82.9% job growth, tops the Bay Area list but is 345th (-26.1%) using EMSI data.* Augusta, Ga. (81.9% growth) is No. 2 according to Bay Area — and 15th (37.5%) according to EMSI.

Two South Carolina metros – Columbia and Charleston – also have wildly different outcomes between the suppressed and unsuppressed data. Bay Area Council reports both metros’ tech sectors grew around 40% from 2006-2011, good for fourth and fifth in its metro ranking. But, according to EMSI data, Columbia’s tech sector scarcely expanded over that time (0.5%) and Charleston’s grew by 67.5%.

*Note that Bay Area Council ranked the largest 150 metros, whereas the EMSI ranking used the complete list of 383 core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) with high-tech industries.

The following table provides the top 25 metros for tech growth from 2006-2011, as ranked by Bay Area Council, and how the percentages and rankings stack up with EMSI data.

Conclusion

Suppressed employment and earnings data can be a big stumbling block for researchers and local practitioners. The above examples show just how much year-over-year job change can be distorted if suppressions aren’t accounted for, which can lead to the wrong assumptions about a specific industry or region – or, worse, faulty decision-making. This is why EMSI has gone to great lengths to develop unsuppressed data estimates that can be trusted.

The EMSI data shown in this post comes from Analyst, our web-based labor market data and analysis tool. For more information on EMSI or our unsuppressed data, contact Josh Wright (jwright@economicmodeling.com). Follow us on Twitter @DesktopEcon.