Relevant indicators:

• Job and wage growth

Analyses of jobs and wages by industry are based on an industry-level dataset constructed using two-digit NAICS industry data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Due to some missing (or nondisclosed) data at the county and regional levels, we supplemented our dataset using information from Woods & Poole Economics, Inc., which contains complete jobs and wages data for broad, two-digit NAICS industries at multiple geographic levels. (Proprietary issues barred us from using the Woods & Poole data directly, so we instead used it to complete the QCEW dataset.) While we refer to counties in describing the process for “filling in” missing QCEW data below, the same process was used for the metro area and state levels of geography.

Given differences in the methodology underlying the two data sources, it would not be appropriate to simply “plug in” corresponding Woods & Poole data directly to fill in the QCEW data for nondisclosed industries. Therefore, our approach was to first calculate the number of jobs and total wages from nondisclosed industries in each county, and then distribute those amounts across the nondisclosed industries in proportion to their reported numbers in the Woods & Poole data.
To make for a more consistent application of the Woods & Poole data, we made some adjustments to it to better align it with the QCEW. One of the challenges of using the Woods & Poole data as a “filler dataset” is that it includes all workers, while QCEW includes only wage and salary workers. To normalize the Woods & Poole data universe, we applied both a national and regional wage and salary adjustment factor; given the strong regional variation in the share of workers who are wage and salary, both adjustments were necessary. Another adjustment made was to aggregate data for some Woods & Poole industry codes to match the NAICS codes used in the QCEW.

It is important to note that not all counties and regions were missing data at the two-digit NAICS level in the QCEW, and the majority of larger counties and regions with missing data were only missing data for a small number of industries and only in certain years. Moreover, when data are missing it is often for smaller industries. Thus, the estimation procedure described is not likely to greatly affect our analysis of industries, particularly for larger counties and regions.

We applied the procedure described above to the county and state levels (though very few data points were missing the state-level QCEW data). To assemble data for metro areas, we aggregated the county-level results.