Industry and Occupation Demographics Methodology

Industry Data

Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) data is used to create demographic percentage breakouts that we can apply to Emsi industry job counts (based on QCEW). QWI gives percentage breakouts by age/sex or race/ethnicity for 4-digit industries, but the breakouts are partially suppressed:

Emsi uses American Community Survey data to unsuppress non-disclosed values in QWI:

The unsuppressed QWI data is then converted to demographic percentages that show what percent of the jobs in each industry should be allocated to which demographic. This percentage breakout is further enhanced by data from ACS.

The result is a percentage breakout for a detailed set of NAICS codes particular to ACS but not as detailed as Emsi. Where ACS’ NAICS codes are not as detailed as Emsi’s, we apply the same QWI/ACS-based breakout to all Emsi NAICS within the most detailed QWI/ACS category. The final product is Emsi 6-digit industry job counts, broken out by age, gender, and race/ethnicity:

Because it is based on Emsi final industry job counts and percentage breakouts, summing demographic-specific job counts will result in totals that match Emsi final industry job counts.

Occupation Data

Emsi’s occupation demographics data is created using the end result of the above process. Final industry demographic job counts are combined with an ACS-enhanced staffing pattern which includes demographic detail:

The result is occupation job counts with demographic detail, again by age, gender, or race/ethnicity: