Occupation Comparison

The Occupation Comparison report lets you compare multiple occupations side-by-side within a specific region. With data related to growth, earnings, industries, and more, this report gives a detailed picture of how various occupations are balanced within a certain economy. 

To begin the report, select at least two occupations to compare, either by typing them in and selecting from the dropdown menu, or by clicking Browse or Groups.  Then select a region of study (county, city, MSA, state, or nation) and click Run.

Remember, once you’re in the report you can adjust the data by using the left-side menu.

In this example, we will be looking at data for Registered Nurses and Home Health Aides in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue MSA. 

Occupation Group Jobs and Earnings Comparison

At the top of the report, you can see the number of jobs and the hourly earnings. This chart shows that there were 29,222 jobs for Registered Nurses in 2015, and that number has grown by over 4,000 jobs in 2020. Jobs for Home Health Aides, however, have diminished by around 1,000 in the last 5 years.

We can also see that there is a large gap in median hourly earnings for these two occupations: $40.30 for Registered Nurses, and $13.69 for Health Aides. If you’d like to see how these numbers compare nationally, simply change your region in the left-side menu. 

Occupation Group Growth Comparison

The next graph is a more detailed version of job growth. We can see that Registered Nurse occupations have experienced a 15% growth in jobs; Home Health Aide jobs have declined by 21%.  

Occupation Group Shift Share Comparison

Here we have the shift share for Registered Nurses and Home Health Aides in Seattle. 

Shift share includes occupation mix effect, national growth effect, expected change and competitive effect. To give you a more concrete number, we also provide job change. As shown by the negative number under competitive effect, Home Health Aide occupations are losing ground in Seattle, which is in line with the expected change for the region. It appears that Registered Nurse jobs outgrew the national trend, meaning that Seattle has some unique regional factors that allow for nursing occupations to thrive. 

Occupation Group Location Quotient Comparison

The concentrations of Home Health Aides and Registered Nurses in Seattle seem to be fairly close to the national concentrations, and haven’t shifted much in the last five years. In fact, Registered Nurses had a location quotient of 0.78 in 2015 (meaning that the concentration just below average) and maintained this LQ into 2020, whereas the LQ of Home Health Aides declined from 0.55 to 0.42. 

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