Tools of the Trade: Workforce Data in the American Community Survey

Tools of the Trade:

Workforce Data in the American Community Survey

Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution requires that the federal government conduct an “enumeration” of all people living in the country once every ten years for the purpose of apportioning seats among the states in the House of Representatives . Originally, this work was done by a temporary Census Office to administer each count, but as the work became more complex, Congress established the U .S . Census Bureau in 1902 to operate on a permanent basis . As the need for all manner of data about our country grew, additional products were added to supplement the data that were collected from the once-adecade census . You might remember filling out your 2020 Census form, because we were all spending a lot more time at home during the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic . As it turns out, there weren’t all that many questions to answer . The form only asked for name, sex, race, and ethnicity, along with one question on whether the respondent owned or rented their home . Whatever else we might want to know about the population of the United States has to come from some other source . Between 1970 and 2000, this was accomplished by sending a longer form with more questions to a subset of households . This was eliminated starting with the 2010 Census because something better came along: the American Community Survey, or ACS . Starting in 2005, the Census Bureau began administering the survey nationwide . The goal is to receive responses from about one percent of the population every year, which is more than

enough to obtain useful information not just at the national level, but for all sorts of geographic scales . For areas with at least 65,000 people, it’s possible to get estimates based on a single year of survey responses . If it’s smaller than that, you’ll have to rely on a five-year average. So, for counties in South Carolina, about half of them are big enough to have one-year estimates available, while the other half are not . Five-year averages are available for areas as small as block groups, which are essentially neighborhood-level boundaries, as well as for all cities and towns, no matter how small (though the margin of error might get rather large) . What data can we get from ACS? Not surprisingly, a lot . There are sections of the questionnaire dedicated to housing, education, health insurance, disability status, veteran status, and more, along with a lot of questions about employment. You can find this information by going to data .census .gov . On this page, there’s a search box that looks a lot like what you might find from a search engine, but it’s probably not going to give you exactly what you’re looking for quite as easily . You will probably need to look through several tables and may need to change some of the parameters to get the right data . Let’s see what this looks like on the website . One data set produced by the LMI Division, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, reports the number of workers by occupation, but only at the state or regional level . What if I want these data by county? ACS can help . I put the words “occupation for all

counties in South Carolina in 2019” into the search box . (Why 2019? The pandemic disrupted collection of data in 2020, leading to incomplete production of “experimental” one-year estimates, and 2021 data are not yet available.) Here are the results: You can see the first result is Table S2401: Occupation by sex for the civilian employed population 16 years and over . This seems to fit the bill, though the categories are a bit broad. You can see that there are filters for geography, year, and topic based on what I typed in . If I scroll down the list of tables at left, there is another option (Table B24010: Sex by occupation for the civilian employed population 16 years and over) that provides a higher level of detail . I can scroll to the right within the table to see all the data, but it’s probably better to just download an Excel or CSV file, which you can do above the table on the right . Note that not all counties are included; this is because the default is for one-year estimates, which as discussed earlier, aren’t available for smaller counties. If you want to switch to five-year data, and they’re available, you can use the drop-down menu to view 20152019 averages instead, which will be there for all counties . And again, this sort of analysis can be done for all sorts of areas . Maybe you want the data by school district, or legislative district, or ZIP code … those are all options available in ACS . But what if the question you have isn’t answered by one of the preset tables? That’s where microdata come in . Alongside what is released on data .census .gov, the Census Bureau also publishes the complete set of responses to the survey, but with any identifying information removed. To make sure no one can figure out what responses came from which people, the only geographic information provided is the Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA) in which the respondent lives . PUMAs are regions drawn such that there are more than 100,000 people in each one . South Carolina is divided into 30 of them; some located in urban areas are relatively small, while in rural communities, they can cover as many as six counties .

While the Census Bureau does publish these data themselves here, the most commonly used source for microdata is the IPUMS USA website maintained by the University of Minnesota . IPUMS makes it easier to select exactly what data you want and provides clear documentation on what is and isn’t available . Even so, this is a tool for power users that have experience with econometric analysis, so if that isn’t you, there might be some further reading to be done . Or if you have questions, you can just reach out to the Labor Market Information team by emailing lmicustomerservice@ dew.sc.gov. We’re here to help you find the data and insights that you need .