Industry and Occupation Demographics Methodology

Industry Data: Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) data is used to create demographic percentage breakouts that we can apply to industry job counts from QCEW. QWI gives percentage breakouts for 4-digit industries, but the breakouts are partially suppressed. We use American Community Survey data to fill in suppressed values in QWI. The unsuppressed QWI data is then converted to demographic percentages that can be applied to the Emsi job counts for each 4-digit industry. The breakout for each 4-digit industry is applied to each 6-digit industry within the 4-digit category.

Occupation Data: Our occupation demographics data is based on a combination of QWI industry demographics (above), ACS occupation data, and standard staffing patterns. We first use ACS microdata to create specialized age, sex, and race-ethnicity staffing patterns. Then we send QWI-based data through those staffing patterns, which results in our occupation data.  

To break it down: 

1. We start with QWI (4-digit industry) data…
2. We use ACS to unsuppress the QWI data…

3. We take the 4-digit breakouts (e.g. 53% male and 47% female) and apply those breakouts to all 6-digit industries in that 4-digit industry. The result is industry demographics:

4. From industry data, we apply a special staffing pattern using data from ACS to add demographic detail:
   
5. End result: occupation demographics.