Professional, scientific & technical
The share of jobs within commuting reach of a tract that are in professional, scientific and technical services, and how that share has moved over five years.
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Of all the jobs within commuting reach of a tract, the share that are in professional, scientific and technical services. This describes what kind of work is nearby rather than how much of it there is.
The Census Bureau defines the sector as comprising "establishments that specialize in performing professional, scientific, and technical activities for others," activities that "require a high degree of expertise and training." The listed activities include "legal advice and representation; accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll services; architectural, engineering, and specialized design services; computer services; consulting services; research services; advertising services; photographic services; translation and interpretation services; veterinary services; and other professional, scientific, and technical services" (2022 NAICS Manual).
The expertise clause is the reason this share carries information: it is the one sector whose official definition is written around credentials and training rather than around a product or a process. It is not, however, a proxy for office work in general. The Bureau excludes day-to-day office administration — "financial planning, billing and recordkeeping, personnel supply, and physical distribution and logistics" — placing those in the administrative and support sector instead, and it treats finance, insurance, and information as separate sectors of their own.
Metrics in this family#
Considerations#
Jobs are counted where the work is located, not where the worker lives — and for this sector the workplace on record is the reporting establishment, which is where the employer says the job is based.
The Census Bureau protects employer confidentiality before publication. The disclosure limitation applied to "the workplace component of LODES uses employer-level input noise infusion" (McKinney et al., CES-WP-20-30), so published small-area values are perturbed relative to the underlying counts.
Coverage is jobs subject to state unemployment insurance, plus federal workers from 2010 onward (OnTheMap Data Overview). Sole practitioners without payroll employment are outside that frame. The reference period is the second quarter of each year.
Two gaps carry through from the published files: Alaska has no workplace data after 2016 and Michigan none after 2021. Tracts there carry no value rather than a zero.
The twenty sector shares sum to one, so this share can rise because professional employment grew or because other sectors shrank.
Birdseye derives these shares from the sector job counts the Census Bureau publishes; the shares themselves are not a published series.
References#
- 12022 NAICS Manualhttps://www.census.gov/naics/reference_files_tools/2022_NAICS_Manual.pdf
- 2McKinney et al., CES-WP-20-30https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2020/CES-WP-20-30.pdf
- 3OnTheMap Data Overviewhttps://lehd.ces.census.gov/doc/help/onthemap/OnTheMapDataOverview.pdf