Using Employment Data to Better Understand Your Local Economy

*Using Employment Data to Better Understand Your Local Economy*
This series of extension publications provides a family of tools that can help you better understand your local economy. The tools offer simple techniques for analyzing, presenting and interpreting readily available eocnomic data. This information can then be used to idenify and enhance local economic development opportunities.
Introduction to the Series. In order to craft effective economic development strategies, it is essential to understand the current state of the local economy, including its relative strengths and weaknesses. To learn more about your local economy, you are encouraged to conduct a detailed study of its current and historical performance.
Read Me First! An Introduction to the Industry and Employment Classification System The Industrial Classification system is a basic framework for categorizing establishments, and serves as the baseis for regional economic analysis. Today, much of the readily available economic data related to employment is based on such classifications.
Tool 1: Develop a "Snapshot" of Important Local Economic Indicators A snapshot provides a basic overview of important economic indicators. Usually, these snapshots are presented as a series of tables and charts.
Tool 2: Chart the Historical Perfomance of Key Economic Indicators Tracking the performance of key economic indicators over time can help you identify growing and declining sectors. Trend analysis can also be used to identify new opportunities.
Tool 3: Use Location Quotients to Identify Local Strengths and Opportunities The location quotient helps you identify those local industries that are producing more than is needed for local use and selling outside the region (exporting) and those that are not meeting local needs and are a source of consumption leakage (importing).
Tool 4: Shift-share Analysis Helps Identify Local Growth Engines Separating the role of local and national effects on current regional employment trends has long bedeviled many community development practitioners. Shift-share analysis is one useful tool for overcoming this challenge.
Tool 5. A Pennsylvania Internet Resource for Industry Employment and Occupation Projections CWIA has developed extensive capabilities in addressing questions about future employment growth. Working in conjunction with a national consortium sponsored by the Employment and Training Administration at the U.S. Department of Labor CWIA provides industry employment and occupation projections for both the short- and long-term. The overarching goal of the initiative is to present key labor market facts so that all job seekers looking for quick entry into the labor market can make informed job choices.
Tool 6: Qualitative Analysis Can Provide Unique Insights into Local Economic Performance Because they provide insights into local trends that may not be measurable, practitioners may find qualitative assessments of the local economy are a useful complement to the quantitative tools described elsewhere in this series. Alternatively, qualitative analysis can be seen as a way to tap into local expertise, thus providing information on the local economy that does not appear in official statistics.