Where Are the Workers? Data Sharing Expands Federal Geospatial Analytic Offerings

Robert Pitts and Matthew Graham

By Robert Pitts and Matthew Graham Robert Pitts is a geospatial technology consultant with New Light Technologies, managing the development of OnTheMap for Emergency Management; e-mail: robert.pitts@newlighttechnologies.com. Matthew Graham is a geographer with the U.S. Census Bureau, managing the development of OnTheMap; e-mail: matthew.graham@census.gov. As the economic downturn that began in 2008 extends into its fourth year, demand has grown substantially for data on the state of the U.S. economy, in general, and on the dynamics of jobs and the workforce, in particular. In addition, blossoming GIS tools and applications for the general public have raised expectations about the availability of highly localized data paired with visualization techniques that are easy to use and understand. Finding answers to the following types of questions are of particular concern to many: • Where are jobs and workers located? • What are the demographic and industrial characteristics of workers and employers? • What are the commuting patterns of workers? • How have industries and the workforce changed over time? • How are the economy and workforce affected by localized catastrophic events such as hurricanes, floods and wildfires? These topics are of special interest to economic modelers, workforce developers, urban and transportation planners, emergency managers, and others. However, answering such complex questions requires detailed data about jobs and the workforce on a national scale as well as a fine geographic resolution, along with a longitudinal history to track temporal changes. To discover the answers contained in such a dataset, flexible tools capable of query, analysis and visualization are required. To meet these needs, the U.S. Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program (LEHD) developed a unique data infrastructure and major new data products, and paired them with several innovative Web-based applications that provide significant analytical capability requiring little expertise or background knowledge. These applications include OnTheMap and OnTheMap for Emergency Management. Building a Data Infrastructure To build a national data infrastructure that captures the complex interactions among employers and workers at the local level, LEHD initiated a unique data sharing and integration strategy more than a decade ago. Through a partnership between the U.S. Census Bureau and partner U.S. states, payroll tax (unemployment insurance) wage records from businesses are supplied to the Census Bureau along with detailed information on firms and their structure and characteristics. These data are delivered each quarter, at which point they’re integrated with other national demographic/business/spatial data to create a new database on workers, firms and the relationships between the two. LEHD data sharing and integration enable block-based longitudinal workforce data products. Firm/establishment locations appear in the state-supplied records, while individuals’ home locations are assigned by the U.S. Census Bureau. These data then undergo careful cleansing and standardization procedures, and they’re geocoded to the best geography possible. The result is a longitudinal national frame of jobs, designed to cover the employment history and characteristics of up to 150 million current workers, the payroll history and characteristics of more than 20 million current employers, and their relationship through jobs. Rigorous confidentiality-protection measures then are applied, and data products are constructed for public release. One product in particular, the LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES), combines residence and employment locations to produce a Census Block-based origin-destination dataset (annual LODES data now exist for 2002 through 2009 for most participating states). This dataset serves as the base for OnTheMap and OnTheMap for Emergency Management applications. Staying OnTheMap Due to the size and spatial complexity of the LODES dataset, the LEHD Program decided to build a Web-based application to provide access, easy analysis and basic visualization to a broad array of users who may find value in this dataset. First released in 2005 and now in its fifth version, OnTheMap provides a flexible, spatially oriented approach for creating, viewing, printing and downloading maps, demographic profiles, and reports about jobs and the workforce based on LODES data. OnTheMap demonstrates results of a Distance/Direction Analysis of workers in Albany, N.Y., in 2008. The tool allows users to define a geographic study area and a time period of interest for which a number of different types of analyses may be performed: • Area Profile Analysis—Shows the location and characteristics of workers living or working inside the selected study area. • Area Comparison Analysis—Provides the count and characteristics of workers employed or living, tabulated by predefined areas (administrative or statistical) within the selected study area. • Distance/Direction Analysis—Gives the block-to-block distance and direction totals between residence and employment locations for workers employed or living in the selected study area. • Destination Analysis—Shows the home or work destinations tabulated by predefined areas (administrative or statistical) of workers employed or living in the selected study area. • Inflow/Outflow Analysis—Provides the count and characteristics of worker flows into, out of and within the selected study area. • Paired Area Analysis—Shows the location and characteristics of workers living in one study area and working in another. The graphical results of an analysis are displayed as map overlays with accompanying detailed charts and reports. Map-overlay results consist of Point Overlays (round dots representing Census block counts), Thermal Overlays (shaded contours representing job density per area), Thematic Overlays (shaded geographic areas representing tabulated job counts for predefined areas), Spoke Overlays (commute lines connecting the study area with destination areas) and Flow Overlays (worker flow arrows). Points show where workers are clustered on the map, with each dot representing a specific home or work location. The larger the dot, the more workers there are who live or work at that census block. Thermals show the density of workers measured in terms of workers per square mile. The Thematic Overlays display counts of workers employed or living in geographic features from the selected destination or comparison layer type. Spokes appear in the Destination Analysis results and represent commuting from the selection area to each of the destination areas. And Flow Overlay represents the flow of workers entering, leaving or staying within the selection area to work. Analyses results also can be exported in a variety of formats, including PDF, XLS, HTML, Shapefile and KML. A particularly unique capability gives users the flexibility to define an area of study in a number of ways: 1. Selecting from a predefined geography such as the boundary of a city or legislative district. 2. Drawing a new customized area whose only limitation is that it will be built from Census blocks. 3. Importing a location or area from an external Shapefile or KML file. Through the years, these capabilities have made OnTheMap a popular tool for State Labor Market Information offices as well as planners and researchers in economics, transportation, urban development and, increasingly, emergency management. OnTheMap for Emergency Management Recently, there has been a rise in public attention on the various economic and job-related impacts from natural and man-made disasters. The combination of detailed workforce data, small-area geographic resolution and easy-to-use tools for defining custom study areas has made OnTheMap an increasingly valuable tool for a variety of emergency-management scenarios. For example, users can import an emergency-event area boundary file and then run analyses to learn the characteristics of the affected workforce, industry types and local commuting patterns. However, performing such analyses on rapidly changing emergency events, such as a hurricane, can be cumbersome if not impossible. Because emergency managers must maintain a high level of situational awareness during emergencies, frequent updates about the changing location, intensity and impacts of a particular hazard are critical for effective decision making. Data integration allows OnTheMap for Emergency Management to offer the public real-time workforce information during hurricanes, floods and wildfires. To meet this need for real-time data results, OnTheMap for Emergency Management was developed in 2010. This new Web-based tool provides an intuitive interface for viewing the location and extent of past, current and forecasted emergency events on a map, allowing users to easily retrieve detailed reports containing labor-market characteristics for these different areas. This capability is offered for hurricanes, floods and wildfires, with reports that provide the number and location of jobs, industry type, worker age and earnings. Worker race, ethnicity and educational-attainment levels currently are offered through a beta release. A particularly unique visualization feature allows users to animate (or automatically sequence) through event histories on a map and seven-day timeline. The advantage of OnTheMap for Emergency Management over the original OnTheMap application is that the spatial data for the supported natural disasters are accessed automatically by the application, so users don’t need to know the locations of the most-recent boundary files. Real-Time GIS Data Integration Innovative use of automated data integration technologies allows the tool to provide data updates from various source agencies—every four hours—for hurricane, flood and wildfire areas as they change. The hurricane data are read from RSS feeds from the National Hurricane Center and include the forecast area, current wind radii and cumulative wind swath (i.e., wind history). Flood data are supplied in GIS format by the National Weather Service’s Hydrometeorological Prediction Center and include Flood Outlook Areas, which represent where significant flooding already is occurring or is forecast to occur during the outlook period. Wildfire data are made available by the Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination Group, a group composed of technical and subject-matter experts from various organizations, including the Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture. The data include Wildfire Perimeters, which are updated by regional field offices using ground survey, GPS data, and imagery from aerial and satellite platforms. The application utilizes areal information contained within hurricane, flood and wildfire data updates to spatially query LODES data to generate the reports. Continued Commitment OnTheMap and OnTheMap for Emergency Management applications are made possible by several important factors, including the ability of federal and state governments to partner to extract new value from existing data on firms and workers. After these data are collected together, cutting-edge data methodologies and expertise are necessary to assemble the jobs data, ensure quality, and protect confidentiality of the businesses and individuals. OnTheMap for Emergency Management was used on Aug. 26, 2011, when Hurricane Irene made landfall along the southeast U.S. coast. The accompanying reports contain job counts and workforce characteristics for the area. To deliver the data successfully, innovative applications and tools capable of exploiting details geographically and historically are required. Further expanding the range of the tools through data integration, such as access to real-time data updates during emergency events, ensures an efficient and effective way to meet growing demand in new and specialized areas. With these pieces in place, the LEHD Program has been able to create tools to rapidly access, combine, visualize, and perform increasingly sophisticated analyses over a broad range of workforce- and emergency management-based questions. Continued commitment to these programmatic strengths should continue to produce new and exciting tools for years to come. Authors’ Note: OnTheMap can be accessed at lehdmap.did.census.gov, and OnTheMap for Emergency Management at lehdmap.did.census.gov/em.html.