Educational services
The share of jobs within commuting reach of a tract that are in the educational services sector.
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Of all the jobs within commuting reach of a tract, the share located in NAICS sector 61. The twenty sectors together account for the whole reachable pool, so this describes the mix of available work rather than its size. See Accessible jobs for how the pool is defined.
The Census Bureau defines the sector as comprising "establishments that provide instruction and training in a wide variety of subjects," provided by "specialized establishments, such as schools, colleges, universities, and training centers," and states that these "may be privately owned and operated for profit or not for profit, or they may be publicly owned and operated" (2022 NAICS definitions).
Public ownership is the point worth holding onto: public school and public university employment counts here, not under public administration. A high share therefore marks places where teaching institutions are a major employer — a university town, a district with a large school campus, a concentration of training providers — rather than places where government generally is large.
Metrics in this family#
Considerations#
This sector carries a location problem the Census Bureau names directly. Where an employer operates several sites but does not file a report distinguishing them, "LEHD infrastructure files assign all workers for that employer (within the state) to the main address provided," and the Bureau adds that "nonreporting of multiple worksites is especially common with state and local governments and school districts" (LODES Design and Methodology Report). Where that happens, staff spread across many schools can appear at one district address, inflating that tract's share and depressing others nearby.
Jobs are counted where the work is located, not where workers live, and are measured at the start of the second quarter, in early April — within the academic year, so term-time staffing is what is observed.
To protect confidentiality, the Bureau infuses noise into the underlying employer and establishment records, with a worksite's factor held constant over time so that longitudinal change is preserved. Industry sector is a secondary characteristic in LODES, estimated during that protection rather than carried through directly.
The number counts jobs at educational institutions. It says nothing about the quality of schooling available to residents; measured school outcomes are covered separately under the school metric families.
Alaska and Michigan have no workplace files for the two most recent data years, and Puerto Rico is not covered; tracts there carry no value.
References#
- 12022 NAICS definitionshttps://www.census.gov/naics/2022NAICS/2022_NAICS_Descriptions.xlsx
- 2LODES Design and Methodology Reporthttps://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2025/adrm/ces/CES-WP-25-52.pdf